Dreamer
by mystery umbreon
Summary: Being a pokemon trainer isn't easy. Being a pokemon trainer in a world where bloodthirsty pokemon are always trying to kill you is much harder. Unfortunately for June, a naive trainer just starting her journey, that is the least of her troubles.
1. The Beginning

A/N hey people! I'm kinda nervous right now…it's my first time on fanfiction and I don't really know what to say, so, enjoy the story!

I do not own pokemon

"It's not fair!", a shrill voice tore out, suddenly breaking the uncomfortable silence, the voice belonged to the ten year old floraromean, June Fletcher. Glaring at her mother defiantly, who was sitting in an oversized sofa.

Her mother did not react to her scream as she had thought, instead sighing and lifting her gaze up worriedly to her daughter's amber colored eyes

Months before June's birthday, a horrible accident had occurred in the usually quiet town of Sandgem, professor rowan's laboratory had exploded due to a fire that lit up near some of the chemicals in the laboratory, professor rowan was not killed, however, he had severe burns in the whole of his body, and chemical poisoning, he had asked his best friend, professor willow, to take care of the lab on his absence and gift the new trainers with the three starters, but his problems were far from over…

The chemicals he had been working with evaporated, and spread through the air, inducing aggression in wild Pokémon. The 'Sandgem sickness' spread quickly, driven by gentle winds. The number of people hurt or killed by wild Pokémon multiplied, and so did the kids who decided against the now extremely dangerous prospect of being a trainer, but June was not one of them

June stared at her mother, now with a worried expression. ''Mommy, it's not fair, I've been waiting for this all year, why can't I go?'' she whined.

June's mother sighed exasperatedly, standing up to look at her daughter in the eye, ''I've already told you June, it's too dangerous, what if a wild starly kills you like that poor boy in the television? Huh? What then?''

Her mother's attempt at scaring her had failed, since June just turned her head to one side and said in a defiant tone, ''That won't happen, I'll have my own Pokémon, remember?''

''Well, what if your own Pokémon attack you?'' June's mother tried again, and it worked. Her daughter's hand flew up to her mouth in shock.

''Mum, that won't ever happen! I'll love my Pokémon like they were my children! And Ill feed 'em and pet 'em and hug 'em and-''

''And nothing June, you were never good with Pokémon and you WON'T be, remember the summer camp?'' June's mother interrupted.

June groaned, flicking her brown hair out of her eyes. The memory of the disastrous summer camp still fresh in her memory. ''Mum… I already told you, it wasn't my fault those bidoof tore up the camp, it was that idiot Markus who dared me to throw that rock at the l-''

''What about the time your friend Mandy came here with her houndour? Remember when you tried to pet it? You still have that scar, see!'' Her mother darted in, pulling her arm out exposing the whitish scar near her wrist.

June pulled her arm out of her mother's grasp and shouted, angry tears rushing out of her eyes ''You can't make me stay! I'm still going, no matter what you say!''

''YOU ARE NOT GOING, AND THAT'S FINAL!'' her mother shouted before stomping off to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her.

''I…I…I hate you! I wish d-dad was here! I'm still going and you c-can't stop me!'' she cried between sobs, storming off to her bedroom and throwing herself on her bed where she cried herself to sleep_._

_Ten hours later_

June blinked her eyes open, lazily scanning her room. Posters of famous trainers and coordinators smiled out from the walls. She yawned, wondering why her mother hadn't woken her up for school. She got up reluctantly, her brain sleepily trying to make up an excuse for being late, her eyes rested on her calendar… march 24 was circled in her best glittery pink gel pen.

''March 24…'' she said, racking her brain for the meaning of march 24… suddenly, she felt wide awake, memories of last night's fight flooded her head. As quickly as she could, she got into her clothes she had picked out for her journey, which were composed of a green and white t-shirt with a big cartoony cherrim in the middle, a green coat, a green skirt, pink boots and a big pink bow for her hair. She quickly packed her bag with Poké balls, potions and other Pokémon stuff into her bag.

Tip-toeing out of her room and down the stairs, she checked there was no one there then dashed out to the front door.

_Ha! She's gone to work!_ She thought triumphantly, putting her hand on the door knob. But then she stopped, a dagger of guilt pricked at her insides.

Her eyes wandered slowly and rested themselves on her mother's room. a feeble light escaped from under the door and she could just hear the TV on, before she could stop herself, she crept slowly to her mother's bedroom and opened the door a fraction, just enough so she could see if her mother was there.

She was.

A knot tied itself in her throat, remembering the fight that happened last night. Her mother nearly never fought with her, and when she did, she usually came back and apologize, then they would laugh and make a joke about it. Since her father had died June and her mother had been drawn closer together more than she would have imagined, always laughing and comforting each other when they had been down.

June gulped, trying to force the knot to go back where it came from, but it stayed there, cold and unmoving. She looked at her mother's lonely figure, and decided to at least say goodbye.

_I'm not going to see her for a long while, I have to make sure she's ok…_she thought urgently.

She opened the door and walked in, her heart pounding wildly. She cleared her throat noisily to catch her attention, it did.

Her mother's head swung back to face her. It was obvious she hadn't slept well. Dark rings had drawn themselves under her puffy eyes and her hair looked like she had been running her fingers through it.

She gave June a sad, tired look and said in a small voice "So you're going now…" June gave a small nod and before she could stop herself she flung herself at her mother, her arms wrapping around her body. Her mother tensed up, but then she relaxed and cuddled her daughter back "oh June" she muttered, her face still buried into her shoulder.

"I thought you'd left already"

June released her mother from the hug and smiled at her.

"You know I would never, at least not without saying goodbye first"

Her mother smiled back. "You fight for your dream when you're out there, ok? And don't come back if you're not the sinnoh champ!" she added, chuckling.

June giggled too, then she noticed the clock on the mantelpiece. "Oh no! I've gotta get going before turtwig gets taken!" she screamed, bolting out of the room. She shouted a quick goodbye and set off. Towards sandgem town.

A/N: so… what did you think about it? Please tell me on how I can improve it, okay?


	2. Psychotic Starly And a New Friend

A/N: finally got around to getting this re-done :D school's been dragging me down as usual. So, on with the story!

June's feet thudded madly on the concrete path leading towards Sandgem town, she was never a good runner, and before long she was wheezing in the middle of the path. Wiping a sweaty piece of hair from her eyes, she took a sip from her water bottle and kept on running.

_I must get there._She thought to herself. _I must keep running, I must get there._"I MUST GET THERE!" she roared the last phrase to herself, ignoring curious stares from other trainers. She slowed down when she spotted the 'Welcome to Sandgem Town!' banner, but picked up her pace when she saw a white and black she got nearer to it she drank in its details. It was pristine white and cube shaped, with a half-sphere shaped roof that was filled with solar panels, making the roof look like half a black disco ball. Wind turbines littered the back of the building and scaffolding criss-crossed one side of the building, since one of the walls was still under repair. June dashed to its steel and glass door and burst in.

Professor Willow studied an electronic chart by a high tech machine, which beeped. Satisfied by this, she turned towards her chart and wrote her results in it. Since the accident professor Willow had momentarily taken professor Rowan's place until his burns healed and the doctors made sure that every single bit of chemical waste was out of his system. She studied what had been written down on the chart and was about to write a few more words when the door slammed open, the glass nearly cracking from the impact.

Professor willow studied the scruffy girl that was catching her breath in the doorway. A pink ribbon that was half undone hung loosely by her right cheek, which was red from running. Her clothes were dusty and her boots were caked with mud, leaving ugly stains on the once clean white tiled floor. Professor willow cleared a strand of wispy white hair from her view and frowned at the girl, whose amber eyes met her own grey pair.

"Uh… hi, sorry about your floor" she said, studying the stain. She cleared her throat. "I… I've come to get my starter please… Um…turtwig please?" she wrung her hands together and looked around, expecting a scientist to bring her a tray with Poké balls.

Professor Willow sniffed and stared at the girl. The girl must be out of her mind if she expected to get a starter at this time of the day. "I'm sorry" she said delicately. "We haven't got any s-"

"It's ok!" she said quickly. "Piplup's fine, really!"

Professor Willow scratched her head and glared at the small girl, she was going to be difficult to get rid off. "Listen girl, we are out o-"

"Chimchar! I'll take chimchar, anything!" she was getting desperate; she wrung her hands together and gave a last hopeful stare at professor Willow, her eyes quickly filling with tears.

"NO!" yelled professor Willow, ignoring the shocked expression on the girl's face. "Listen girl, there are no starters here, no turtwig, no piplup, no chimchar, nothing!" professor Willow took a deep breath to calm herself down and turned her back on the girl, convinced she had gotten the message.

"B-but" began the girl, she cleared her throat and started again. "But you're supposed to… to have a turtwig-er, starter for me, I'm ten already!" a few of the scientists near her snickered, but quickly went back to their work.

"I'm afraid" said professor Willow, her delicate tone on it's fullest. "You are too late" she motioned daintily to the huge steel clock on the wall. "All the regional starters have been taken-"

"Couldn't you give me a starter that isn't a regional one?" she whined. "I'd be happy with a bidoof…"

"I'm _sorry_" said professor Willow in a tone than suggested she preffered to strangle her. "I cannot give you any Pokémon from this lab, now" she motioned to the door. "You will have to leave this lab now, or I shall have to call security"

The girl's hand flew up to her mouth; she gulped and tried to stop the tears from spilling out. "Please, professor Willow, this was the day I get my starter and" she stopped to wipe tears hastily from her eyes. "And… please don't kick me out, professor Willow, please give me a Pokémon, or anything!" she took in a big lungful of air as tears began cascading out of her eyes.

Professor Willow sighed and scratched her head; this kid was making her lose valuable time. Making security kick her out seemed like a pleasant idea, but the girl would probably, no, most certainly come back. And what if she sneaked in through the back door and stole one of the Poké balls in the vault? Professor Rowan would never forgive her, the Pokémon there had had their genetical structure shaped to aid their experiments and a single stolen Pokémon could catastrophically ruin their experiments. She had to think…

"Little girl" said professor Willow loudly, making her jump. "I can't give you a Pokémon, but I can give you this" she pushed past a few of the scientists and rummaged through a steel box in the far end of the room, taking out a flattish purple box, she quickly walked over to the girl and thrust the box towards her.

June blinked in surprise as the old professor shoved the purple box towards her. She was surprised that instead of calling a pair of hulking, big muscled thugs to haul her out of the lab and slam the door on her face, she was actually giving her something. It was too flat to contain a Poké ball, but still, with trembling hands, peeled off the lid to reveal something that vaguely resembled a Vs recorder; it was a little flat, bright purple as the box with a big black screen on one side and no visible button anywhere.

"Um… how do you turn it on?" said June, as if responding to her question a small green dot appeared in the middle of the screen, and expanded into a huge green smiley face.

"HELLO, NEW TRAINER!" said the electronic device with surprising cheeriness. "I AM THE SINNOH DEX, A NEW AND RENOVATED POKÉDEX CO-CREATED BY PROFESSOR WILLOW AND ROWAN" the smiley face winked at June and dissolved into a black circle, which flashed once and showed a picture of a very gormless-looking June then turned into a handful of white rectangles. "PLEASE ENTER IN THE FIELDS YOUR PERSONAL DATA, THE SINNOH DEX WILL SERVE AS YOUR IDENTIFICATION, NECESSARY FOR INGRESSION AND REGISTRATION IN POKÉMON CENTRES, POKÉATHLONS AND OTHER TRAINER EVENTS"

June's eyes widened, she stared at the screen, and then towards professor Willow, who pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is, as you might have guessed, the Sinnoh dex, we have brought together, professor Rowan and I, the technologies of previous dexes, and made them better, it is even programmable so more features can be installed, similar to a Pokétch"

"A…a…amazing!" June said, her eyes still wide with wonder.

"Not so much" said professor Willow. "The Sinnoh dex still has errors in its program; it was scheduled to come out in two years when I had corrected all these errors, but you can have one of the unfinished prototypes"

June opened her mouth and closed it numerous times, looking like a magikarp, she finally closed her mouth, which turned into a trembly smile. "Wow… I… thank you!" then, not knowing what to do with all her gratitude, leapt forward, gave professor Willow a hug round her middle, and ran out of the lab, making a huge whoop of joy as she slammed the door closed.

Professor Willow stood frozen to the spot, her eyebrows arching over her eyes and her mouth slightly open. One of the scientists behind her chuckled. "Heh, finally a kid shows you a bit of love, eh?"

"Silence, Jones" said professor Willow icily "I am still expecting that overdue work on energy storage on minuscule cells, that you in particular have been putting off all this time, I suggest you get back to work, _now_" professor Willow shook her head and went back to her chart.

Meanwhile, June was very excitedly exploring her Sinnoh dex, keeping her eyes glued to the screen and not looking where she was going.

"Okay aaaaand, enter!" she said, after tapping out the last of her details on the screen. The white rectangles disappeared and a handful of little pictures lined the screen, June tapped on the first one, a blue circle with a green splodge in the middle, it then widened to show a miniature globe, June quickly looked for Sinnoh, and then Floraroma, which was relatively easy to find. "Awesome!" she said, as she stared at the roof of her house, then she began searching for other places she knew well, she was so immersed in staring at the screen that she wasn't looking where she was going and bumped into a man that had been carrying a large crate of oranges.

"Oi! Watch where you going, lil' ladee!" yelled the man as he piled oranges back on the crate.

"You watch where you're going, I'm a trainer you know!" yelled June back, sticking her tongue out at him. He swore and muttered about rude brats that shouldn't be allowed to be trainers. She ignored him and decided to try out the other features on the Sinnoh dex. "Cool, it even has Tetris!" she squealed, as she decided to dedicate the rest of the day playing Tetris on her Sinnoh dex.

She didn't notice the bright yellow sing that announced in huge black letters: DANGER: TALL GRASS AHEAD. ONLY ENTER WITH TAME POKÉMON OR A CERTIFIED RANGER. WILD POKÉMON REPEL IS ALSO REQUIRED. She also didn't notice tall grass brushing against her legs, or the hum of Sandgem town fading away into the distance. She even seemed to ignore the noise of wild Pokémon calls that soon filled the air. She only really realized where she had ended up when she bumped against the big trunk of an oak tree.

"Oow" she groaned, rubbing the sore spot where a branch had smacked against her forehead. "Hmm… tree" she said, examining it. Then she noticed the scrubby grass, and then the forest plants and the huge canopy of evergreen trees stretching way over her head. "Oh… no" she said, her hand smacking against her forehead. "No, oh no no no no no!" her eyes scanned the vast green and brown smudge of vegetation and dirt. Her mind began to flood with panic and the Pokémon calls and rustles became extra loud. "H-help! I'm lost!" she squeaked, leaning against the trunk of the big oak tree, tears already stinging in her eyes, but taking a deep breath she decided to calm herself down. "Don't worry June" she said, massaging her scalp. "This is like that time you got lost in the shopping centre" she gulped as she looked around. "Although there aren't any not-so-friendly shopping centre people to lead you to-"

"Criiiiiick, crrrrrrrick" chirruped a nearby cricketot.

"AAH! A houndoom! A rabid houndoom!" screeched June, pinning her back against the big oak tree. "Don't eat me! Don't... okay June, you're really pathetic, houndoom don't live on this part of Sinnoh" said June, scratching her head. "only dumb bidoofs and weak Pokémon live here" she scanned the grassy plain to prove to herself there wasn't any evil rabid houndooms, but her eye caught sight of something black in the distance.

June froze, houndooms had black tails, long thin black tails with a sharp triangle at the end that could rip her in tiny little bits with a flick. June screamed and began to run blindly as fast as she could from that place, unfortunately running into a thick forest. She slammed into a good amount of trees and tripped over a rock, landing flat on her face.

"Hoooooh, hrrroooh" a hoothoot cried from a tree, announcing that the afternoon was quickly coming to an end.

"GO AWAY!" screamed June, waving her arms like a windmill. "Leave me alone, LEAVE ME ALONE!" she crossed her arms over her head to protect her face, but she didn't see a spiky bush at the end of the path, which she tore through, scratching her legs and finally bumping what was exposed of her head on a hard surface. "OOOW! Not again" she finally let her arms slump to the side and looked at what she had bumped against. "Wait, this... this is the same tree as before!" June stared at the tree, and began crying, tears cascading down her cheeks. "Th... The s-same tree, I'm lost forever!" she let her body drop to the ground and began to howl, her shoulders shaking with each sob. "I-I'm going to d-d-dieeeeeee! Oh, why didn't I stay hoooome? Why didn't I buy repels?" she lay there for a good five minutes, moaning pitifully to herself until it began to rain, almost as if the sky seemed to want to make it the worst day of her life. June sniffled and crawled under the oak tree, hugging her knees and holding her head in her hands.

Then she remembered. The rabid houndoom! She was in the same field she had seen it before. But she managed to convince herself that the houndoom had probably gone. But she caught a glimpse of something small and black, this time not too far away from her. Before she could convince herself that she had imagined it another one quickly hovered above the grass before disappearing. June screamed and tried to clamber up the oak tree, but as she took hold of the first branch it snapped off in her hand. She stared at the branch; at least she had some sort of weapon.

"Rrrrrarl!"

She heard a loud growling-like sound and turned around to see the sharp black thing flitter over and under the grass angrily, joined by a second black thing. June opened her mouth to scream but no noise came out. Like she was in a nightmare, maybe she was, maybe she would wake up...

But her head still hurt from banging it onto the tree, and it had felt very real. The two black things were making their way towards June and, rabid houndooms or not, she would have to confront them, but what chance did a skinny ten year old with a stick have against two murderous, possibly fire breathing psychotic Pokémon? Right now, June felt as confident and optimist as a wurmple inside a staraptor's beak. Holding onto her stick as if it was her very ticket to life, she watched as the two black things disappeared under the grass.

A bruised-looking shinx ran in June's clearing, followed by two very fat, angry starly. Although relieved that there were no rabid houndooms, June screamed and cowered away, but then she realised the starly weren't remotely interested in her, but in the shinx. She watched as the shinx tripped over a rock and before he could get up, the two starly gave a loud screech and fluttered on top of him, beating his little body with their wings and their beaks pecking him viciously. All watched by June.

She realised that she could sneak out while the starly were busy with the shinx, but as she turned her back on them, she felt a horrible pang of guilt. That poor shinx was getting beaten to death by those starly while she was creeping out of there, safe and sound. She had to do something, anything to at least help that shinx escape, and she quickly thought of something. It wasn't a very good plan, or even foolproof. But it was the only thing she could think of. It was irresponsible, dangerous and stupid, but she had to do it.

"Hey! Leave that shinx alone!" she screamed, sounding way braver than she felt. But even then, the starly completely ignored her. In a rush of adrenaline, June's fear quickly turned to anger. How dare those stupid birds bully that shinx around? He wasn't doing anything to them, was he? And how dare they ignore her rescue attempt? So, before she could think it better, she raised her stick and smacked one of the starly's head with a strength she never knew she had, sending him flying with a long shriek until he landed on his back. June did the same with the other one and soon the shinx was safe.

With the starly out of the way, June could finally see the miserable state of the shinx. His body was full of bruises and cuts, some looking deep. He was lying on his side, his eyes shut and his sides heaving painfully with each breath. He looked too bruised to even stand so, arming herself with courage, she quickly picked him up and carried him in her arms, like a mother carries a baby, and ran away.

The shinx instinctively tried to wriggle out of June's grasp, but June held him firmly. "Wait, don't do that!" she fished around her bag and withdrew a potion, which she sprayed over the shinx. Immediately, most of the bruises faded away and some of the worst cuts seemed to begin to heal. June's brain seemed to realize it was an important situation, and her senses went on overdrive. She could hear wings flapping in the distance, and could see obstacles even better. She even jumped over a rock she hadn't even registered was there.

She placed the shinx on her back, where he immediately clung to, and took out her Sinnoh dex, quickly tapping the map feature and the 'show actual location' button, which showed the thin path they were on. Wondering why she hadn't thought of that before when she was crying under the tree, she zoomed out and found Sandgem town not to be too far away from where they were. But as she ran on, there was a small hill at the end of the path.

June frowned, the path on the map didn't show any hill, but she quickly shoved the Sinnoh dex in her bag and began climbing, but the rain had rendered the slopes muddy and useless, she was about to try and find another way out she heard angry flapping coming their way, she knew they were pretty much trapped and the two angry starly, looking twice as murderous as before, sprang out.

June's mind began to think, they couldn't flee since the path was blocked by the hill, which she couldn't climb, and the other side of the path was blocked by the starly. Realising that they would have to fight their way out, June quickly plucked the shinx from her back and placed him in front of her. "Okay shinx, you need to battle, if we want to get out of this"

The shinx's eyes widened as he looked at his foes, who were still slightly stunned. He looked back at June. "Please!" said June quickly, seeing the starly recover. "Please battle, I know you're scared, but you have to do this" the shinx sighed and nodded, then faced the starly with a determined frown on his face. June whipped out her Sinnoh dex and pointed it at the shinx. "Okay Sinnoh dex, show me this shinx's moves!"

"SHINX'S MOVES ARE... EARTH POWER, TACKLE, LEER, TACKLE..." June frowned; she was pretty sure that electric types couldn't use earth power, so she had to rely on tackle and leer. The starly flapped towards them, and the shinx was ready.

"Right, tackle and leer!" she cried, as if though she had been a trainer all her life. Immediately the shinx leapt forward and hit the biggest starly, sending it crashing to a tree, he turned around and gave the other starly a sharp leer, making the starly stop in its tracks. "Tackle! Tackle until it's down!" said June, thrusting her fist in the air. The shinx took a deep breath and charged forward, hitting the starly squarely in the chest. The starly smashed into a rock and fainted, but the shinx seemed intent in revenge, and tackled the starly angrily.

June's eyebrows wobbled. "um, shinx... you _do_know that the starly is down, right?" the shinx paid no attention and tackled the starly harder. "Stop it!" screamed June. "You might hurt him really seriously!" the shinx roared and smashed his head in the starly's side. June leapt forward and wrapped her arms around the shinx "Stop, please!"

It worked like a calming drug, the shinx froze and a few seconds later slumped forward in her arms. June panicked and cradled him in her arms, but he snored quietly and burrowed into June's arm. June smiled and whipped out her Sinnoh dex, which thankfully showed their real position. June quickly searched the nearest Pokémon centre and began making her way towards it.

"I'm actually glad" she said to herself. "I didn't think of opening the map when I was under the tree"

A/N: please tell me what you thought of this version, kay? :3


	3. Ukko, Budews And A Sarcastic Chimchar

A/N:ok guys, new format for my story:

"_italics speech"_Pokémon talking (in poke-language of course)

"normal speech" human talking

_Italics only:_thinking (human and Pokémon), and time passing.

**Bold:**flashbacks (Won't be used in a while)

Okay… on with the story!

The next morning rose sunny with cloudless skies, almost as if the angry rain clouds from last night had never existed.

Shinx had snoozed comfortably in one of the examination tables at the Pokémon centre until a loud noise had woke him up. He shot a filthy look at the pink haired nurse in front of him, but she smiled sweetly at him and said "I'm sorry to wake you up shinx, but I thought that you should wake up your trainer soon, she's going to miss breakfast"

Shinx frowned at the kind nurse, his head cocked in a confused expression. As far as he could remember, he couldn't remember being 'caught in a poke ball', whatever that meant.

Then he realized she was talking about that girl with the huge bow on her head from last night. He muttered a quick goodbye to pink nurse and set off to find bow girl obediently.

He found her quickly and leapt on her to try and wake her up, it didn't work. Instead, she just mumbled something sleepily and turned around. Shinx rolled his eyes and decided to give her a little scratch, you know, just to make sure she awakened. _Scratch_

"OOOOW! What the…"

"Is there something wrong?"Nurse joy burst in the room looking concernedly at June. Shinx frowned, how on earth did she get here so quickly? You would have thought she had been eavesdropping or something.

"Oh! Um… don't worry, I'm ok, my shinx just scratched m-" she stopped talking and looked awkwardly at shinx. "Well…he's not really MY shinx, he's kinda my buddy, right?" shinx nodded. Nurse joy nodded and examined the scratch on her right cheek

"Hmm, it's only superficial, but I think we'll need to disinfect it " nurse joy picked a purple bottle from the rack and wiped the gooey gel from it on June's cheek, "you might want to go downstairs, breakfast is getting served" said nurse joy, sticking a band-aid on her cheek. June nodded, and followed the nurse downstairs.

The dining room was enormous, trainers of all shapes and sizes were packed inside chatting excitedly. Some had their Pokémon out, feeding them bits of their breakfast, other trainers were chatting proudly amongst themselves about an 'amazing' capture they had done the day before and in the whole, everyone was having a great time.

June grabbed a sandwich and some orange juice and set off to find a table where there weren't any fire types around. She found one and sat down, munching thoughtfully on her sandwich. Suddenly, she felt something furry touch her leg. She squeaked and prayed it wasn't a stray venonat or a houndour.

She looked down and saw a familiar smiling face peering at her from under the table. "Hey! You're that little shinx from yesterday! How are you? Those starly sure were scary, weren't they?" shinx nodded and leapt on her lap, looking hungrily at the sandwich on her hand. June nodded and ripped half of the sandwich and gave it to shinx, who munched on it gratefully.

June watched shinx devour his piece of sandwich and thought about what she would do once they had come out of the Pokémon centre, she would probably release him outside and then…

Then what?

She didn't want to release him, not really. She wanted_him_ as her first Pokémon, but she couldn't just shove a Poké ball in his face and make him hers, that sounded… mean…

Should she ask him if he wanted to be her Pokémon? She'd never heard of a trainer asking a Pokémon to be theirs, they usually battled and then the trainer would chuck a Poké ball and hey presto, you had a new Pokémon to battle with, that was how it usually went…

Well, not this time

"Hey shinx" she said, trying to give him a confident smile.

The shinx stopped eating and turned to look at her, a piece of ham still dangling from his mouth. "Uh…shinx, would you like to… to be my Pokémon?"Said June, feeling stupid all of a sudden.

Shinx let the piece of ham drop in surprise, not because he didn't like the prospect of being June's Pokémon, but because he'd never considered the prospect of having a trainer. He'd always been his own boss since he was born and he didn't know whether he would like someone telling him to do things he didn't want to do and obeying every command without question. He'd heard of cruel trainers who beat their own Pokémon if they lost battles or the ones that used their Pokémon to kill their own kind without any pity or remorse

He looked at June, who was still smiling stupidly at him. He knew she wasn't one of the _bad_trainers. Otherwise, why would she have saved him last night? She could have just walked away and left him to his own luck, she had to be one of the good trainers.

Shinx nodded, and placed his right paw on her hand to seal the deal.

"WOOHOO!" cheered June, picking shinx up and swinging him round and round in euphoria. "Oh my mew, my first Pokémon! This is so awesome! Oh, but you're gonna need a name right?" June stopped spinning and put shinx down, who started teetering back and forth like a drunken spinda. "Eh…how about Ukko? Do you like that?" she said, remembering the name from homework on history she once had done.

Ukko smiled, he was glad he had a name, he didn't want to remain as 'shinx' forever, that made him sound… ordinary…

June's grin stretched out further. "I'm glad you like it. Hey, but you're gonna need to get into this first!" June looked through her bag and picked out a Poké ball with stickers on the top.

She opened it and chucked a bunch of coins out of the inside of it. "here, I was using this one as a piggy bank, but you can be in it, here" Ukko peered curiously at the inside of the Poké ball, wondering how on earth was he going to fit in there.

"Huh? What's wrong, don't you like it?" said June with a little tone of resentment in her voice. "those stickers there cost a fortune… well, I didn't _buy_them, I sort of nicked them from a boy at summer camp, but mum found out and stopped my pocket money for a whole mo- well that doesn't matter, you sure you don't want a Poké ball?" Ukko shook his head; he didn't feel like being crammed into a ball smaller than his head. "ok, but I'm going to need to difference you from other shinx… hold on, I've got an idea" June rummaged through her bag and pulled out a long piece of red fabric and tied it around ukko's neck like a neck scarf. "There! Ok, I think we should catch some Pokémon before heading towards oreburgh, budew are common around these parts, maybe we should catch one!"

_A few minutes later..._

"I _just_ don't get it, budew are supposed to be extremely common around these parts…" muttered June, flicking her hair angrily. After 5 minutes of walking they hadn't found a single budew and June was getting sick of looking at empty patches of grass.

"…this is stupid, were not going to find any bu- Ukko! Shush!" she whispered frantically, even though Ukko had kept quiet the whole time. June parted some grass that was blocking her view and pointed at a puddle near some rocks, in the puddle a budew sat, dipping her stubby feet into the water. June smirked "right, on the count of three, jump and tackle her, ok? One. Two. Three!" Ukko jumped as high as his legs would allow him and headed for the budew, but the budew noticed and jumped to one side. Ukko landed head first in the puddle and became caked in mud. He got up and growled at the budew, who giggled and set off in the opposite direction. "NO! Ukko, tackle it until it's down, DON'T LET IT GET AWAY!" June shouldn't have bothered to say that, as Ukko had already ran off in pursue of the budew.

He aimed and tackled, but the budew jumped to one side and smiled teasingly at Ukko. Ukko tried to tackle her once, twice, three times, but every time Ukko darted in to get the budew she hopped to one side and smiled. They looked like they were doing some strange dance, with Ukko trying to tackle the budew and the budew hopping around to dodge his attacks.

_"Stop...-Gasp-…jumping around like…-gasp- that! How am I supposed to tackle you? Panted_ Ukko, glaring at the budew

Budew frowned_ "Why would you want to tackle me? Couldn't you train on a log or a rock?" _

_"I'm not training; I'm trying to capture you"_

_"Capture me?"_said budew, frowning. _"How are you supposed to capture me with tackles?"_

Ukko shook his head "_no, stupid. I'm supposed to tackle you until you're weak, then my trainer will catch you_"

"_You're__ a liar__"_ said budew, pouting at being called stupid.

"_What do you mean? I'm not a liar! Why else would I tackle you for? Tackling budew isn't one of my favourite hobb-_"

"_No…stupid-I mean, you're not a trainer Pokémon_" Ukko frowned.

"_What do you mean?_"

_"You don't smell like a trainer Pokémon. You don't have a Poké ball, do you?" _

_"No…I suppose not, but still. I do have a trainer, she's …er…coming… she must have gotten lost or something"_

If budew had eyebrows they would have shot off straight of her face.

_"Oh yeah? Well, how's she like, then?"_

"_Um…she's very nice… and she likes to dance"_said Ukko, remembering how June had swung him round and round in the dining hall.

"_Ooh, does she? Do you think she could teach me how to dance?_" said budew excitedly, the vines on her head clapping together.

"_Oh sure, but you've got to be her Pokémon, y'know. She doesn't just wander around giving random Pokémon dancing lessons_" said Ukko coolly, smiling at budew's euphoric mood.

"_Okay then, but what do I have to do to become hers?_"

"_Easy, just pretend to have fainted then when she comes, she'll catch you. And you'll be dancing like a professional in no time!_" budew giggled excitedly and dropped to the ground, her eyes tightly shut. _Too easy,_ thought Ukko with a huge grin on his face. He strained his ears to see if he could hear June's footsteps and sure enough, he could hear she was only a few yards away. He puffed his chest out proudly and sat right next to the 'fainted' budew.

June burst through the thick grass and gasped in happiness when she caught sight of Ukko and the budew. "Oh WOW! You caught up with the budew, well done" she bent down and scratched Ukko behind his ear, who started to purr happily. June smiled and looked towards the budew, who was still stretched out in the grass. "I got lost when you bolted off; you were going so fast I didn't have time t-"

"Whoa, look keegan, a budew! And he's already fainted! How lucky"

a boy walked out of the tall grass with a chimchar on his shoulder. He wore a navy blue coat with a white poke ball outline on the neck, black jeans and red trainers. He had brown messy hair and light blue eyes.

He pointed a Poké ball at the budew and a red beam of light engulfed budew and pulled her into the Poké ball. He smirked and called her out. She did a little pirouette happily but when she saw that her trainer wasn't the dancing girl trainer Ukko had talked about her face fell in disappointment.

"Right! I'm gonna call you… grasspunch!"

"Whoa! Hold on there, that's **my**budew"

The boy lifted his gaze and glared at June defiantly. "Well, I don't see your name on it, I found him, so he's mine"

"How do you even know he's a boy? She might be a girl you know"

The boy pouted. "So what? He's mine, not yours" June frowned, there was something about this boy that seemed familiar, he must have been the boy she sat next to in the cafeteria.

"No it isn't, he or she is mine, Ukko weakened it, so he's mine!" the boy scowled at June, but suddenly his face changed, as if he had just realized something

"… June? Wait, June Fletcher? From summer camp?"

June blinked when she heard her name, then she finally understood. "What? Markus? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Huh, you're not the only trainer in the universe, you know" said Markus, crossing his arms.

"No idiot. What I mean is, weren't your parents moving to Johto? "

"They _were_" said Markus, pouting. "Mum didn't get the job, so we had to stay here"

"Oh, great…" muttered June.

"Well, I wasn't exactly looking forward to meet you either" said Markus, sounding slightly hurt "but I was hoping that we'd make up after what happened at the summ-"

"NO! Don't mention that! God, you don't know how embarrassing that was" snapped June.

Markus rolled his eyes "Sheesh, I can't believe you haven't gotten over that already. Besides, who'd be dumb enough to enrage a herd of bidoof into rampaging through the whole camp, remember that little girl whose-"

"SHUT UP! That was your fault, why'd you dared me to do it? And on top of all, I had to be marched out in front of everyone, and you just stood there, laughing while I suffered the most …Markus! Are you listening?"

"Huh? What?" said Markus, who had just yawned.

"UGH! And you still want to make up, but besides, that's not the point, that's my budew. End of story"

"Well, you're not taking MY budew without a fight-"

"RIGHT!" shouted June, clenching her fists.

Markus' eyebrows arched "What? No! I mean a Pokémon fight"

"Oh…yeah right..." said June, feeling like a total idiot

June and Markus found a small clearing fit for battling, without any tall grass or rocks to get in the way. They stood on the opposite side of the clearing, giving each other sharp looks.

"Right, Ukko. You ready?" said June encouragingly. Ukko nodded and fluffed up his fur, glaring at Markus's chimchar, Keegan.

"Ok keegan, you gotta win this battle, we can't let a girl win our budew, right?" Keegan growled in agreement.

"Right! Ukko, use tackle!" Ukko ran forward, heading for Keegan, but Keegan was too quick, stepping to one side before Ukko could make contact.

"Scratch, keegan!" keegan jumped behind Ukko and swung his arms up, Ukko turned around to try and figure out what was he planning to do

Bad choice

Ukko gasped as keegan's arms swung down, his fingers making contact with his face and sending long, thin cuts on the sides of his face, Ukko backed away drunkenly, the pain making him feel dizzy. He rubbed the sides of his face and waited for June to give a command.

"Tackle! You can do it!" Ukko nodded, and tackled the chimchar, who was busy gloating about scratching Ukko. The chimchar skidded to a halt and growled at Ukko, who was laughing a little too loudly.

"Come on, Keegan! Defend yourself!" shouted Markus, thrusting his fists in the air.

Keegan looked at Ukko, who had stopped laughing but still looked pretty cocky, grinning and puffing his chest up at his trainer who was dancing around like a sugar-high jynx.

"_Hey shinx_" called out keegan.

_"My name is Ukko"_said Ukko, giving a proud flick of his tail.

_"Yeah, whatever_._Anyway, just wanted to congratulate you on that tackle"_said keegan, smiling oddly.

"_Oh yeah? Um… thanks_" said Ukko, a little puzzled that the chimchar was complimenting him.

Keegan's smile widened. _"Yeah, you sure caught me off guard. Oh, and I like your ribbon, can I see it?"_Ukko nodded innocently and walked over Keegan. Keegan smirked and as soon as the shinx was close enough. He took in some air and blew embers fiercely onto Ukko. The fiery blast caught Ukko full on, and set his scarf on fire. Ukko screamed, and tried to rip off the flaming neck scarf. But when he did, he could only watch in dismay as June's gift burned to ashes. He whimpered, picking up a piece of fabric that had survived the embers.

_"Why'd you do that?"_whined Ukko, looking at keegan with saddened eyes.

Keegan cackled cruelly. _"Oopsie! Sorry about that, guess I should cover my mouth when I sneeze!"_he said, his voice brimming with sarcasm.

Ukko stopped whimpering and glared at Keegan. _"You did it on purpose…"_he growled, angry tears forming in his eyes. "_You burnt June's present… YOU BURNT IT!" _

_"Gee man, calm down. It was just a stupid ribbon, no need to get so worked up about it"_ said Keegan worriedly, he could sense ukko's anger rising, and he had never sensed a Pokémon so angry before.

_"Stupid? STUPID? I'll show you stupid…"_Ukko darted forward and tackled keegan in the stomach, knocking all his breath out. He got up, wheezing and panting but Ukko tackled him from behind, sending him crashing to the ground. Keegan turned around and shot embers at Ukko, but he just swatted them away like flies. Ukko charged up his tackle and ran forward, Keegan screamed and tried to run back to his trainer but it was too late. Ukko's tackle was so devastating that when ukko's body made contact with keegan's, a dust cloud erupted from the impact and clouded them both.

Markus and June exchanged worried looks, they couldn't see anything because of the smoke cloud and they had to wait impatiently until the dust had settled. When it did, they were surprised at who had won, it was…

A/N: Ha! I left a cliffhanger! See you guys next time.

Love. Dana


	4. Galactic Win

A/N: Wow guys! Thanks for all the nice comments in my story ^_^ and thank you for the grammar tips .

Markus and June stared blankly at the dusty curtain, some of the dust had settled but most of it kept swirling around, cloaking their Pokémon. And the wait was becoming unbearable.

June fidgeted anxiously with the buttons on her coat, if there was one thing she hated more than fire types it was waiting, especially when a friend of hers was in trouble. She sighed and looked at Markus, who had the same impatient look on his face.

"Uh... who do you think won?" said June, trying to relieve some of the tension building up in the battle field.

Markus jumped slightly when he heard her voice and June had the feeling she'd just interrupted his thoughts. "Um...I don't know... it wasn't that clear, was it?"

"No, it wasn't" June agreed. "But did you see ukko's tackle? It was awesome..."

"Yeah... but Keegan's ember was awesome too, did you see when keegan-"

"Pfft... just a bunch of pretty sparks..." said June, crossing her arms.

"Wait... are you calling Keegan _weak_?" said Markus, pointing his index finger at her.

"I didn't say he was weak, I said... hold on, I think I see keegan!" June pointed at the trunk of a nearby tree. At the foot of it, she could clearly see a faint reddish glow emanating from it.

Markus shot out towards the tree, unaware that there was still a lot of dust swirling around; June sighed and sped off, trying to find Ukko. It was way harder than she expected. the dust had covered just about everything in sight and the dust buffeted her in the face and got into her eyes and mouth. She spluttered and tried to feel her way until...

"SHIIYEEENX!"

"Oops... sorry Ukko" said June, blushing. "I didn't see your tail..."

Ukko shrugged and leapt into June's arms, emitting a soft whimper when he did so. June smiled and scratched him behind his ear but Ukko looked at June unhappily and showed her a piece of charred red cloth he had been clenching between his teeth

June took the piece of cloth and examined it carefully. "hold on... this is... well..._was_ your neck scarf, wasn't it?" shinx nodded and buried his face in her chest, expecting to be told off for not guarding his present, but June smiled and reassured him it was no big deal.

After a quick bath at the Pokémon centre, June and Markus were already in the Pokémon centre lobby, eating a bagel and chatting happily about their battle, just like everyone else there.

"Did you see Keegan's ember? It looked like little fiery bullets!" said Markus, throwing a piece of ham towards keegan.

"Yeah, but Ukko's tackle was what won us the battle, wasn't it?" said June, giving Ukko a grateful squeeze.

"What do you mean, _won us the battle_" said Markus "you didn't win..."

"Yes I did, keegan fainted, so I win!" said June chirpily, giving Ukko a piece of cheese.

"Yeah, but Ukko fainted as well" replied Markus

"No he didn't, he was wide awake, weren't you? And besides, you'd still owe me a budew even if we hadn't won, don't you remember?"

Markus blinked in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"The dare! Remember? You said that if I did it, you'd give me a Pokémon, so, hand the poke ball over"

"No way! I'm not giving you my first capture, ever!" said Markus, crossing his arms and pouting. "Besides, you got kicked out of the camp remember?"

"That makes no difference, now. GIVE ME MY BUDEW!" June tackled Markus without waiting for a reply and rummaged through his bag. She found the budew's poke ball and pocketed it, giving Markus a victorious grin.

Markus glared at her but didn't bother getting his budew back since everyone was staring at them. "Fine, but this won't be the last time you'll see me! I'm going to beat Cynthia before you and become SINNOH CHAMPION!"

"YEAH RIGHT! I'd like to see YOU try!" roared June, watching him leave the Pokémon centre in a huff. June smiled at Ukko and called out the budew, who started leaping around happily when she saw that her trainer wasn't that weird boy that wanted to call her grasspunch.

"Hello little buddy!" said June chirpily, grinning at the bud Pokémon. The budew squealed and started twirling in big circles around June euphorically. "Whoa... stop spinning around like that, you're making me dizzy!"June giggled, placing her hands on the budew's sides to calm her down; the budew stopped but kept grinning up at June.

"You're such a little dancer! Hey... that's a good name, dancer! Do you like that?" June said, tickling her, dancer nodded and giggled even louder. Ukko winked at dancer who returned the wink. "Right! Ok Roark, you better be ready 'cause dancer and Ukko are gonna beat your Pokémon and WIN THE COAL BADGE!" roared June, thrusting both of her fists into the air.

"Um... I _don't _think you'll be able to beat Roark just yet..."

June jumped and swung around to see who had spoken to her, it was a girl with long white hair and sparkly blue eyes, she smiled kindly and pointed at her team who had hidden behind June's legs.

"But why? Aren't my Pokémon strong enough?" June asked, sounding a little hurt.

"No, I mean yes but no, what I mean is that gym battles are three on three, so you'd need another one, see, also, electric types don't do well against rock types" said the girl, matter-of-factly."You should also train them up a bit, it would certainly help"

"o-oh, right" said June

Ukko ventured out of his hiding place and crept stealthily towards the girl. He sniffed curiously at her shoes, she smelt like a faraway place and treeckos.

"Aww... what a cute shinx!" said the girl, bending down to stroke Ukko who grinned and cuddled up to her. "Hey little budew, come! I don't bite!" the girl beckoned dancer forward but dancer decided that she was comfy where she was. The girl shrugged and got up, smiling at June. "Hey, I was just wondering... how about we train together? I thought red and I could train but it isn't much fun training against rocks and logs, y'know"

"sure! That'd be awesome... but I didn't catch your name, I'm June"

"I'm Yue, so... let's go!"

Within a few minutes, June and Yue had picked out the perfect battlefield free of dust and with a gentle breeze blowing through the field.

"Okay June, are you ready?" said Yue, holding out two poke balls with a steely glint in her eye

"Ready!" called out June happily

Yue took a deep breath and, taking advantage of the wind's direction, threw the poke balls high into the air, once airborne, the poke balls flashed red and two different Pokémon materialized out of them, a treecko and a swablu. June didn't need to throw her poke balls, since dancer had wanted to walk outside her poke ball towards the clearing.

"Ok" called out yue "Red, use pound, Alta, use peck"

"Ukko, tackle and dancer, absorb!" said June, a little too loudly.

Red and Alta flung themselves at their opponents, Red's fist and Alta's beak glowing an eerie white. Ukko managed to jump out of Red's way and tackle him from behind but dancer, who had used absorb, wasn't so lucky. Absorb, although it hit Alta, did nothing to stop her from jabbing her glowing beak into dancer.

"No, that's not right, you see when an opponent is going to attack your Pokémon you need to tell it to dodge or to counter with another move" said Yue

"-Sigh- ok then. Let's try that again, ok?" said June

"Right. Red, use-"

"Whoa... cool, a trainer battle! Hey, can I join in?"

June and yue turned around to see the boy that had just spoken, he had spiky red hair and green eyes, giving them a hopeful smile.

"Um..." began June "you see... we'd love to battle with you, but we're just-"

"Great! Ya ready, squirtle?" said the boy, chucking a poke ball high in the air, Yue sighed and recalled Alta, who gave a loud squawk in protest.

A squirtle materialised in the battle field, sticking his tongue out at Ukko cheekily. "Ok squirtle, use bubble!" the squirtle took a deep breath and blew bubbles all over June's team.

"Dancer! Stun spore, quick!" the two vines on the top of Dancer's head separated and little golden dust-like particles radiated out from them, heading for the bubbles. But the only thing the spores did was stick to the bubbles uselessly. But Dancer was ready for it, she separated her vines again and used stun spore, but instead of just standing there, Dancer spun round and round quickly, which created a mini golden tornado, the tornado swallowed the bubbles and with a quick flick of her vines, Dancer threw the tornado at her opponents and swallowed them too.

The tornado stopped whirling around and dropped the Pokémon in a heap, the remaining dust that wasn't blown by the wind lay on the ground like confetti, but amazingly, the Pokémon caught in the stun-tornado weren't paralyzed, only slightly dizzy.

They charged towards Dancer with very angry expressions on their faces, they had clearly _not _enjoyed their little trip; Red attacked Dancer furiously with pound while squirtle tackled her angrily. Ukko, who had somehow avoided the stun-tornado, took pity on Dancer and decided to help.

Ukko opened his jaws and closed them down on Red's tail. Red screamed and thumped his tail violently to try and dislodge Ukko, but Ukko wasn't having it, every time red threw his tail down, Ukko would bite with more and more strength until Red had collapsed. He turned towards the squirtle, who had been watching the whole thing, and bit his arm, but the squirtle was smarter, he blew bubbles in Ukko's face so hard Ukko nearly choked and had to let go to breathe, then the squirtle used tackle, sending Ukko flying.

Luckily. Dancer, wanting to repay Ukko, used absorb on the squirtle while he was gloating. Red orbs of light flew out of the squirtle's body and into budew, who absorbed them greedily. The squirtle did a frantic attempt to tackle Dancer but it was too late. Before the squirtle could make contact with Dancer's body he collapsed, his health drained.

The three trainers recalled their Pokémon with funny looks on their faces, yue looked like she was trying to understand what had just happened, the boy looked like he had just swallowed a bucketful of live eels and June looked like a magikarp, opening and closing her mouth without saying anything. Until the boy spoke up.

"Whoa, hey, how did you teach your budew to do that? The spinny dust thing?"

"Uh... I didn't" admitted June.

"Yeah, it sure looked cool, but there's something I just don't get" said the boy, cocking his head to one side. "I mean, why didn't it paralyze the Pokémon, stun spore never fails when it hits..."

"Maybe it was something to do with the wind" suggested June

"Or maybe my squirtle's bubbles washed the paralyzing away" said the boy

"Maybe they're all immune, the Pokémon, I mean" muttered June, "but I don't know... could be any of the three... hey Yue! What do you think?... Yue? "

Yue had wandered off and was looking at some blossoms on a nearby tree with a very funny look on her face, as if she had caught a fox undoing the latch on a chicken run. She then snapped off some of the delicate flowers and presented them proudly to June.

"Uh... very nice, Yue. Thanks..." said June stupidly.

"No, look, see these? Do you know what tree these blossoms belong to?" said Yue

"Uh... that tree?" said June, not too sure that was the answer Yue was looking for.

"Nope, these are Cheri berry blossoms, see" said Yue. "Cheri berries neutralize the paralyzing effects of stun spore and this..." Yue stuck her finger inside the flower and showed June the yellow pollen inside. "This is Cheri berry pollen, it must have been flitting around when Dancer did her attack and neutralised the paralysis" she said, grinning.

"Aah... so that's why it didn't work..." said June, smelling the flowers. They smelt a little spicy. "Look Ukko, smell these!" said June happily, throwing the blossoms onto the ground, Ukko went over to smell them, but sneezed.

"Well, it was lovely training with you, June, but I have to go now, mom should be wondering where I am" said Yue, giving June a sad smile.

"Yeah, same here. But maybe we'll meet again, right?" said the boy. "oh, by the way, my name's noel, hope we meet again soon!"

"You bet!" said June chirpily.

After waving goodbye to her new friends, June and her team set off towards oreburgh, hoping to find Pokémon on the way there.

"Look Ukko, abra are supposed to live around here" June chattered, showing Ukko a picture of an abra on her sinnoh dex. "Aren't they cute? They're also psychic, that could help us against Roark, don't you think?"

Ukko nodded, keeping his eyes peeled for any abra in the area...

"Shut up, stupid. She's gonna hear us"

Ukko blinked, had he heard something? He was sure he heard human voices somewhere...

"Shush, be quiet. I think her shinx heard us..."

Ha! He had heard something! He thought about alerting June but she would probably mess it up, he wanted to catch the two people alone. So, taking advantage of June, who was busy fawning over a bidoof she found 'cute', Ukko crept quietly towards the source of the sound.

Inside a big, plastic bush, Ukko found two of the most weird trainers he had ever seen before, they had mushroom-like hairstyles and both of them had dyed their hair to an odd shade of blue, they had funny space suits and white boots, one of them was holding a pair of binoculars and the other one had a twig stuck in his hair.

"Hey, are you sure she's gonna have valuable Pokémon?" asked the grunt with the binoculars.

"Sure, she'll probably have one of the starters, and besides, even if she has useless Pokémon we don't want to come back empty handed, right?" said the one with the twig on his hair.

"But how are we gonna steal her Pokémon?"

"Easy, we'll just tell her something or threaten her or something, and if she resists then we'll battle her and pick up her Pokémon when they faint before she can recall them"

These guys were going to steal June's Pokémon! Ukko had the sudden urge to sink his fangs into the robber's arms but they would catch him and dancer couldn't battle against their Pokémon alone and Ukko could sense at least three Pokémon in the robber's Pokémon. So Ukko decided to walk back to June and pretend he hadn't seen anything.

June hadn't missed Ukko the few seconds he was away, which was better, he thought. He didn't want to spoil June's mood before the battle. "Aww... did you see how the bidoof was holding his food with his little paws?" Ukko nodded, keeping his eye on the plastic bush.

Then suddenly, the two robbers scrambled out of their hiding place and up a tree. Ukko watched in fascination, how can they climb those trees so fast? Were they part-pachirisu? That would explain their blue hair colour...

June glanced at Ukko, who was staring at the top of a big tree. She looked up to see but there was nothing there, just leaves, braches and maybe a wurmple or two. "Hey Ukko, did you see an abra up there?" asked June. Ukko shook his head but still kept a close watch on the branches. June frowned and looked back at the same spot Ukko was looking at, but still saw nothing, she'd heard tales of luxray being able to see through walls... could shinxes see through foliage?

Before June could ask Ukko this, two figures fell out of the tree Ukko was looking at. They had funny space suit-like clothes and identical haircuts. One of them (who had a twig stuck in his hair) walked towards June with a false smile on his face.

"Hey... hey you little girl" he said. "We need your Pokémon for an experiment, orders from professor willow... uh, we're assistants"

"Why would professor willow need my Pokémon for?" June asked, eyeing sceptically the assistants' space suits.

"Uh... she needs them for... for making them super strong! That's it! Isn't that right, Dr. Logan?" the assistant with the twig on his head said, motioning for Dr. Logan to come closer.

"Oh yeah? Well... how come you don't have lab coats on?" said June. "When I went to the lab everyone was wearing lab coats..."

"W-well, that's because... um..." said the assistant with the twig on his head, jabbing Dr Logan in the ribs with his elbow.

"Ooow! Uh, you see, we use these clothes when we come out of the lab, they're filled with Pokémon repellent

"Oh yeah? Then, what about your hair? I didn't see anyone in the lab with _that _hair colour... actually Ukko, let's just leave these nutters and look for another way of getting out of here..."

"HEY! Hold on, little girly, you're not going anywhere" said the assistant, jabbing his gloved finger in June's chest, Ukko jumped in the middle of June and the assistant and growled, but the assistant just snarled and kicked Ukko hard.

"Hey! D-don't do that to Ukko!" said June, she was starting to get scared. The assistants didn't look friendly at all.

"We'll do anything we want, girly. We're team galactic and nothing can stop us! Now..." he said, his tone dropping dangerously soft. "You're going to give us all your poke balls, and if you cooperate nicely, we won't hurt you and we will just walk away, ok?"

June whimpered, and looked worriedly over to Ukko, who had gotten up and was walking towards June, feeling dizzy and bruised. She didn't want these 'galactic' guys to hurt her... but if she gave her Pokémon to them, they would hurt them even more, so, taking a deep breath and trying to sound as confident as she could she said:

"No, I'm not giving you anything"

The confident grin from the galactic guy's face wiped off and was replaced with a scowl. "Oh yeah? Then how about this, how about we battle you and when we win, we get your Pokémon, how's that?" and before June could say anything, the galactic guys threw two poke balls into the air, a glameow and a stunky materializing from them.

June had just commanded Dancer out when the stunky started attacking Ukko, raising both his paws and bringing them down harshly onto Ukko's back. But the glameow did nothing. She simply planted her bottom on the grass and watched.

"Glameow, attack! Use scratch!" said the galactic guy, but the glameow shook her head and refused to move, watching Ukko bite the stunky with much interest. "Glameow, NOW! I won't have this nonsense, scratch!" but the glameow refused to move. She hissed at him and lied down.

The galactic guy was furious. His face turned red (clashing oddly with his hair) and stamped his white boots into the ground, then, in a sudden flash of inspiration, he took a deep breath and kicked the glameow into the battlefield.

The glameow managed to stand up in shaky legs and looked at June pleadingly. June gasped, how can anyone be so mean to their Pokémon? She watched as the glameow shook her fur out and walked back towards the galactic guy determinedly.

_Don't go._ Thought June, _he'll only kick you again, don't go. _But the glameow paid no attention to June's pleads. The glameow's walk became a run and as soon as she got to the galactic guy she sat down in front of him, the puff on her tail flicking from side to side. The galactic guy smiled and bent down to scratch her head.

"Heh, I knew you'd come back pleading" he said, stroking the glameow's crescent shaped head, the glameow purred and scanned the man in front of her, looking for... something, until she found it.

The glameow leaped and went straight for his arm. She dug her claws onto his arm and while the galactic guy screamed, she picked up something from his hand in her mouth and leaped away from the guy, smacking his face with her tail in the process.

She sprinted towards June and dropped the thing in her mouth at June's feet. June picked it up, it was a poke ball.

The glameow winked at June and fluffed her fur up, ready for battle. Meanwhile, the galactic guy was throwing a tantrum. "NO! How DARE you leave team galactic? You're gonna pay for this, glameow"

The galactic guy threw a poke ball in the air, a zubat materializing from it. The zubat headed immediately for the glameow but she dodged and pinned the zubat down with her claws. Meanwhile, Ukko and Dancer ganged up on the stunky, dancer paralyzing it with stun spore and Ukko biting him in the back, the stunky gave one last cry and fainted.

Ukko clicked his tongue happily and ran over to help the glameow with the zubat. One bite to the neck was all it took to make the zubat faint; it was probably tired already from trying to escape from the glameow's claws.

June grinned, she picked up the glameow tenderly and stroked her crescent shaped head, the glameow purred, her tail flicking side to side, making the galactic guy stamp his white booted feet in anger, but he knew that no amount of yelling could ever bring his glameow back.

He shot June a filthy look and walked out of view, muttering something about glameows being useless and weak. June watched the two galactic guys walk away in a huff and grinned even more.

She turned towards the glameow and cuddled her. "Guess you're going to need a name, right?"

The glameow nodded, yeah, a name, that would be just fine...

"Ok, then... how about Moon? Do you like that?" moon nodded and purred happily. June smiled and recalled dancer and Moon back. Grinning her head off, she walked towards a rocky entrance with 'OREBURGH GATE' written in big iron letters.

_Get ready Roark._


	5. Diamond Cutters?

A/N: ok, here is chapter 5!... well, this isn't actually a chapter, more of a teaser, you'll find out why...

After five short minutes at oreburgh gate, June and Ukko emerged covered in dust and stone chips, but with huge grins on their faces.

Oreburgh had never looked so pretty, or majestic. With its array of different sized houses, all made of steel which glinted in the sunset brightly. Smells of food cooking and sounds from the market filled June's mind. Her gaze wandered over the city, taking up all of the view until she spotted what she had been looking for.

"Ukko, look! The gym!" she squealed excitedly, pointing her finger at the gym not too far away from view. "D'ya think Roark's in?" she asked.

Without waiting for an answer, June sped off towards the gym happily, her boots pounding the earth. Ukko sighed and followed far behind June. _Why can't she keep still?_

June ran towards the front door and knocked on it determinately, grinning victoriously as if she had already won the coal badge.

"Hello? Anyone there?" she shouted, knocking harder. She waited.

Nothing

"I'm June, I've come to challenge you, Roark!" she screamed, banging her fist on the door a little too hard.

"Ooow" she whimpered, clutching her throbbing hand and rubbing the reddened spot on her fist. Fuming, she picked up Ukko (although he would have preferred to stay on the ground) and stomped out, growling something about stupid gym leaders not taking care of their gyms when it's clearl-

"He's not in, you know" a girls voice taunted behind her "and cracking your hand open won't bring him back, he's got WAY more important things to do than attend snotty brats"

June froze, and already she could feel herself turning bright red.

"W-well, it's his duty to be here" she mumbled sheepishly, not wanting to turn around to face the girl.

"My mew, misinformed much? Haven't you heard?" the girl said, the taunting tone in her voice growing. "If you're gonna travel somewhere, you should at least know what's happening there"

"Oh, and you do?" said June, turning imperiously to face the girl.

The girl had long blue hair, partly hidden under a red beret. She had a pale complexion and a grey jumper with red badges on it, she wore a pair of black shorts and white and blue trainers and had cold, dark purple eyes.

The girl flicked a strand of hair out of her eyes and frowned at the little girl, who was staring curiously at her features.

"What are you staring at?" she snapped rudely, examining the girl in front of her, who didn't lift her gaze, there was something odd about this girl, no doubt about it. She examined her closely and it finally made sense.

"...wait, June? June Fletcher?" she asked shyly, inspecting the girl closely, June gasped and nodded.

"Whoa, Mandy! It really is you!" June cried happily, flinging her arms around her friend.

Mandy grinned. "It's been a long time, eh June?"

"Ya think? Why did you stop sending those postcards? I really liked the ones from heart- oh god, don't t-tell me you brought him..." June paled and backed away, pointing at a lone Pokémon that had been sitting in Mandy's shadow all the time.

"What, Harkie? Oh come on, don't tell me you haven't gotten over that" said Mandy, motioning to Harkie. "Look, he's much better behaved now, see!" Mandy picked up Harkie and showed him to June, who Harkie recognised immediately.

As soon as he saw June, he snarled and bristled, showing her rows of needle-sharp teeth June knew too well. June screeched and backed away, holding Ukko as though he were a houndour-reppellent.

"YEEK! Get that thing away from meee!" screeched June, cowering away from Harkie, while Mandy tried to quieten him down.

"Heheh, uh, you see, he gets really nervous around electric types..." she lied, struggling with a growling Harkie who was trying to wriggle out of her arms as though his life depended on it. It was a few whole minutes until Mandy finally decided to put Harkie into his poke ball and for June to stop shrieking, after many apologies from Mandy, June and Mandy were soon in the Pokémon centre, huddling around hot chocolate mugs and chatting about their adventures.

"so you see, I kinda gave up on fighting fantina, she's really tough, you know, so I came here for the diamond cutters' to see if I'm any good at contests..."

"Wait, hold on a second, what's a diamond cutters?" asked June, wiping chocolate froth off her lip.

"Wow, so you REALLY don't know?" asked Mandy. "I thought you were only joking!"

"But what IS it?" asked June.

"Well, you see, it's a contest, but not just any contest" explained Mandy. "the diamond cutters' is the first contest oreburgh has had in five years! You see... what's special about this contest is that it's more of a charity contest... you see, there's a lot of Pokémon breeders out there and they leave Pokémon eggs in Pokémon centers, and what happens is that sometimes these breeders forget their Pokémon eggs here and..."

"Wait, forget their Pokémon eggs?" asked June.

"Shush, anyway, when an egg has spent five years in the store room, the breeder officially loses his rights to the egg and the egg now belongs to the Pokémon centre. But, you see, these eggs have been building up, and the Pokémon centre has decided to give some away, great choice if you ask me..."

"Wow... that's awesome! ... What do I do to get inside this contest?"

"Nothing! Well, you need good Pokémon, of course, maximum three, and they can't be rock types because Roark is a judge and he loves them, so it would be a bit biased"

"Hmm... well, I'm ready for this contest! I'm gonna win first place and a Pokémon egg!"

"Well, you've got to get ready soon..."

"Why? When's the diamond cutters anyway?"

"Tomorrow night"

"WHAT?"

A/N: ok guys, if you want your OC to be in the diamond cutters' remember to include your OC's contest dress, your Pokémon's contest appeals (optional) and anything else you can think of. See you soon!


	6. The Diamond Cutters Contest Part One

A/N: Hello guys! Sorry it took so long, we had exams and homework and revising, and everything is a little complicated here.

My apologies to altaria fan, I couldn't put your OC in this chapter, but I'll put her in the next.

"June..." said Mandy wearily, prodding her sleeping friend awake. "June, wake up... June? JUNE!"

"Waah! Oh.. Oww...my head" muttered June, still half asleep.

"June, why on earth are you asleep in the Pokémon centre's backyard?"

"Whu... the what?" said June stupidly.

"BACKYARD! Look, you've even dribbled all over the picnic table... eww" groaned Mandy.

"Oh yeah, I have... I mean I am in the backyard..."

"So, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you in the backyard? God, you're so thick..." grumbled Mandy.

"Oh yeah... um I was... practising for the diamo-"

"WHAT?" exploded Mandy. "You've been practising for the diamond cutters... ALL NIGHT?"

"Well... it _is _today..." said June.

"Ugh... June, Pokémon get _tired_, ok? And your Pokémon were _already_ tired from the trip here! How are your Pokémon supposed to enter the diamond cutters if they're _very tired?_" said Mandy as if she was teaching an unruly toddler her lessons.

"I-I didn't think about that..." stammered June.

"Of course you didn't, now... where are they..."

"Oh my god!" shrieked June. "Ukko! Dancer! Oh god... what have I done?" June jumped up and sped off toward a small group of bushes where Ukko and Dancer lay, motionless. Moon was beside them, licking her paw and stretching indifferently.

"Ukko... wake up..." whispered June, stroking the back of his head tenderly. Moon stopped stretching and watched, an amused grin on her face.

"Ukko, what's wrong?" she said when Ukko remained motionless. Moon's grin spread wider.

June began to panic. "Ukko, wake up! T-this isn't funny anymore!" then she turned to dancer. "D-Dancer? You too? Wake up, both of you... please" said June, her tone shrinking to a whimper.

"Hey, what's wrong?" said Mandy, walking in. "why are you crying, and what are your Pokém... oh no..."

"Guys..." whimpered June, tears flowing steadily out of her eyes. "I'm... I'm... I'M SORRY! I d-didn't mean it... this is all my fa-a-ult!" she wailed between sobs.

"Come on... stop crying" said Mandy sympathetically, sitting down beside her "they aren't dead... are they?"

June just wailed harder, her shoulders shaking with each sob.

"Whatever's the matter?" said Nurse Joy, rushing towards the girls. Moon meanwhile, deciding that June's crying was becoming obnoxious, stalked off with her tail in the air.

"Well..." said Mandy. "Her Pokémon kinda _died_ or something..."

Nurse joy sat down next to June and held Ukko's wrist, she looked at the pink watch on her wrist and with a relieved smile, patted June's back gingerly. "Don't worry, they're not dead"

June stopped crying and wiped the tears from her eyes hastily. "They're not?"

"No, but I think they have a strong case of exhaustion, I'll bring them in to the lab to give them a proper diagnosis"

Soon June, Mandy and nurse joy were in the lab, with June and Mandy sitting in some plastic chairs in the far corner, Dancer and Ukko both lying down on a pair of hospital beds with metal skullcaps perched on their heads and Nurse Joy staring at a computer screen with unreadable diagrams and odd wire mesh illustrations of Ukko and Dancer. Nurse joy tapped one of the difficult-looking diagrams, but it must have made sense to her because she muttered out loud. "Strong case of exhaustion, paralysis on one, mild scratches and bruises..."

"So, are they gonna be ok?" asked Mandy.

"Yes, it seems that they are going to be fine" said Nurse Joy. "However, they must rest here for quite a while, if you want them to be in top condition for the contest"

"How long is that?" asked Mandy.

"About... nine hours" said Nurse Joy, looking at one of the diagrams.

"Nine hours? Then that leaves us..." said Mandy, looking at her purple poketch. "Wah! Twenty minutes left to practice before the contest!"

"I don't want to go to the contest anymore..." mumbled June, hiding her face behind her hair.

"Oh, come on, you're not gonna sulk all day, we'll go sightseeing meanwhile, and when we come back, Yukko and Dancer will be ready, besides, you still have Moon, right?"

"His name's Ukko" muttered June, but Mandy was too engrossed in listing all the things they were going to do meanwhile they waited.

"And we can go to that museum where they revive Pokémon from fossils! On second thought, no. Who the heck wants to go to a museum? We can go to some shops near Onyx Street, I've heard of some good ones, we can buy some contest outfits... come on already!" babbled Mandy, grabbing June by the hand and pulling her roughly toward the exit.

Within a few hours June and Mandy had found Onyx street and were staring at rows and rows of expensive, but beautiful contest dresses. June walked with her head hung but Mandy was happily looking at the shops like she were in Disneyland.

"Wow! June look! That one has so many rhinestones in it! How many do you think there are? Hundreds? Thousands? It's so pretty... but, oh no. 500! Oh geez..." said a slightly disappointed Mandy. "But look! This store has bargains! Come on, let's go in!" she said, dragging June in the shop.

Soon they were inside the shop, browsing dresses (although Mandy was the only one doing the browsing, June just hung around behind her carrying the dresses).

"Oh wow! Look at this one June! There's so many dresses here... do you like this one? Too many sequins? ... Oh, wow! These are purple! The _so_ go with my eyes" she chanted, throwing about twelve dresses at June although she was already drowning in cotton and satin folds.

"Mmmh... Fmmfmhh" mumbled June through the many dresses.

"Hmm... maybe we could find you an amber one, June! Ok, I'll look in that pile and you look in that one, okay?"

June threw off the dresses off her head and went to look in the pile Mandy was pointing at obediently and began browsing.

"...please help me find her..."

June stopped midway of examining a tacky golden one and craned her neck over the pile of clothes. _Someone was missing?_ She thought, _I'd better listen, I mean, I might have seen her in the street._ Just as she was thinking how lame her excuse sounded, the woman muttered something.

"... quite short... brown hair...amber eyes..."

June frowned. Short? Brown hair? Amber eyes? She blushed, but drove the accusing thoughts away, after all. Many people have brown hair and amber eyes...

She hoped.

"Yes... eh... June Elizabeth Fletcher"

June stared. It really was her! But who would be searching for her? She hadn't done anything bad... had she? She walked on to see what this person wanted with her. The person was a woman with fading brown hair and worried amber eyes...

Amber eyes?

Was that her mother? She crept closer and sure enough, there was her mother, talking to a blue haired policewoman. The officer Jenny nodded and wrote down June's characteristics that her mother was describing. _Why's mum here? _June thought, she thought about running away but she knew that was a stupid idea, after all, her mother must have a pretty good reason to have tracked her down all the way to oreburgh...

Blushing, she crept toward her mother and cleared her throat loudly. Her mother turned around and when she saw June she let out an odd, high pitched squeal and gave her a bone-crushing hug.

"Oh June, I've been so worried... back at home, I called professor willow to check that you had gotten there safely, and when she told me you'd left without a starter..."

"Mum... can't... breathe..." muttered June through her mother's arms.

"Oops, sorry love" said her mother, releasing June from the hug. "Anyway, how've you been?"

"Fine thanks... uh mum? How did you know I was going to be in Oreburgh?"

Her mother smiled. "I know my little girl June. I knew you wouldn't miss this contest for the world, and I was right! Besides, I had to give you something" her mother reached inside a blue handbag and pulled out what looked like crumpled up, cobwebby fabric.

"Ta da! See, it's a contest dress!"

To be frank, it was hideous. It was a ballroom-like dress with what looked like a whole truckful of frills and dark navy bows, the dress was made of navy-black, light blue and yellow layers of the delicate, floaty fabric, it had a small, strapless blue top with about the same amount of frills as the dress and big four-pointed yellow plush stars stuck in the front, and a black cape.

"Do you like it?"

June sighed and stared at the dress, trying to think of something positive to say.

"Um... it's very... nice" said June, thinking how pathetic that sounded, but her mother was delighted.

"Ooh, really? It used to be mine, you know. I wore it for a play when I was your age, it was called, 'the dark night', everybody admired it..."

June stared; it must have been a _very _dark night for someone to admire this...

Just as she opened her mouth to try and convince her mother that she should wear another dress. A loud voice interrupted her.

"Hey June, where've you been? Oh, hey there Abigail!" said Mandy, suddenly appearing behind June.

"Oh, hello. Mandy" she said coldly, eyeing Mandy. "So, accompanying my daughter on her journey, eh? Well, I certainly hope you take good care of my daughter and what is this?" her eyes darted toward a small burn in her jeans. "So, still have that... thing? Well, I really had expected..."

"Muum" groaned June. "could we come out the shop, please?"

June's mother blinked and smiled "Of course honey, come on, I've heard of some good cinemas around here"

"Cinemas? But... won't we be late to the contest?"

"We won't, we still have... three hours to the contest" said Mandy quietly.

"Exactly! And along the way, you can tell me what you girls have been up to" said June's mother happily.

Meanwhile, in the Pokémon centre, a small figure slowly stirred awake.

"_Yawn... huh? This isn't the training ground,_" said Ukko, looking around. "_Hey, Dancer! Wake up..._" he said, nudging the bud Pokémon awake.

"_Hmm... oh hello Ukko_" said Dancer sleepily. "_What happened? The last thing I remember was training over there then..._"

"_We blacked out" _nodded Ukko. "_I know, but... where's June?_" he looked around the centre and tried to smell her familiar smell. "_Man... I wish I was a luxray and look through walls_"

"_Your trainer's gone,_" said Moon, suddenly appearing by them. "_She left you guys to get better_"

"_Get better for what?_" asked Dancer, sitting up.

"_Well, obviously for the contest_" said Moon. "_It's the only thing she cares about; she even trained you to exhaustion_"

"_No, she didn't_" said Ukko. "_She fell asleep and we just continued training..._"

"_Well... you were the idiots then,_" said Moon in an annoyed voice. "_Why would you continue training until collapsing?_"

"_We wanted to get some good appeals,_" said Dancer, smiling. "_We wanted to win an egg for June, so she'd be really happy and we woul-_"

"_Who cares if she's happy?_" snapped Moon. "_Seems like getting caught melted your brains..._"

"_Wait a second, you were caught too_" said Ukko, starting to dislike Moon's tone. "_And I wasn't caught..._"

"_Then you were born an idiot_" said Moon. "_Besides, I wasn't caught by her_"

"_What's so bad about her, Moon?_" asked Dancer innocently.

"_Well... if you want my opinion, she's pathetic,_" said Moon.

"_Nobody wanted your opinion,_" growled Ukko.

"_I did,_" piped up Dancer.

"_Dancer, you're not helping,_" growled Ukko.

"_Hey, calm down, little blue..._" said Moon worriedly, sensing Ukko's anger growing. "_It almost seems like you were defending her, she took you from the wild..._"

"_She. Saved. My. Life. And. I'm. UKKO!_"

Ukko roared and threw himself at Moon, catching her by surprise; Dancer screamed and threw a cloud of stun spore involuntarily in the air, which floated around them in a golden cloud. Ukko tackled Moon and sank his fangs into her leg but she kicked him off and pinned him down with her claws, Ukko bristled and snarled, spitting at Moon's face but she remained calm, a sneer drawing onto her face.

"_Give up, little blue, did you really think you would win?_" scoffed Moon, her claws digging into his shoulders. "_How pathetic, you are just like your trainer,_" Ukko growled and shut his eyes. Moon, thinking Ukko had given up, relaxed her grip. However, Ukko wasn't done yet; he snapped his eyes open and roared, unleashing the strongest electrical current he could muster. Moon screamed in agony and dropped to one side, completely paralyzed.

Ukko sighed and hopped to one side to comfort Dancer, who was whimpering in the corner.

"_Are you ok_?" whined Dancer, examining worriedly the cuts on Ukko's shoulders.

"_I'm ok_" smiled Ukko. "_But you've gotta watch out for that old hag" _he said, motioning to Moon, who was staring at them with hatred.

"_She's... gonna be ok, isn't she?_" asked Dancer.

"_Yeah, the paralysis will wear off after a couple of minutes_" said Ukko. "_Actually, maybe even quicker, I can hear that nosy nurse coming towards this room, bet she's gonna come in and say: 'whatever has been going on in here?'_" chuckled Ukko, imitating Nurse Joy's voice.

The door flew open and Nurse Joy walked in, a worried look crossing her face. "Whatever has been going on in here?" she asked concernedly.

Ukko and Dancer looked at each other and burst out laughing, much to Nurse Joy's bewilderment.

June, Mandy and June's mother lounged on chairs in a small restaurant, after having decided that they were all still hungry after the popcorn.

"So, there I was, a thousand starly were chasing Ukko and me" said June. "And when we though all was lost, Ukko released a huge thunderbolt and then..."

Mandy might have already cracked a rib from trying not to laugh if June's mother hadn't interrupted June.

"Wait dear" she said, she took out a small chip from her bag and smiled at June. "Would you please give me your Sinnoh dex?"

June nodded and handed her the Sinnoh dex, which beeped loudly when it touched June's mother's hand. She took it, turned it around her hand for a bit and, with a satisfied click, pressed it in place.

"Uh... what did you do?" asked June.

"The chip I installed contains updates and new things for your Sinnoh dex, try it"

June stared at the sinnoh dex for a while.

"Oh, please," giggled her mother. "Don't tell me you don't know how to use it!" she took the Sinnoh dex and said. "Menu"

The Sinnoh dex beeped twice and a dozen little pictures appeared on it. "Look, here. This one is your pokedex" she said, pointing at one of the pictures that looked like a small book. "This one is a video call, you can call anyone that has any kind of pokedex or video phone... there's the egg scanner, the personality checker, poffin or pokeblock taste scanner, radar, map, item teletransportation..."

"Whu? I can get sent items with my Sinnoh dex?"

"Only small ones, like Poké balls, berries, anything that can fit on top of the screen" she said. "Well, it's been lovely girls, but I must go, you two should go too..."

They nodded and went to pick up their Pokémon from the Pokémon centre, who were very happy to see them (although June suspected moon wasn't as enthusiastic as the others to meet her) and set off towards the contest hall.

The Oreburgh contest hall was a huge round steel structure like a football stadium and glittered under rows and rows of giant light posts. The most intriguing of its features was the inside, which had been decked with royal blue and silver balloons and other decorations, June stared in awe at these decorations, marvelling at the fact that such a rough and dusty city could have so much luxury in one place.

They gratefully took their numbers at the entrance and headed toward the dressing room, where they tried on their new dresses.

"Juune... come out of there"

"No"

"June, bet it doesn't look that bad"

"It does..."

"... Just get out of there."

June sighed and walked out of the changing cubicle.

"Oh god, you were right, it _does _look that bad"

June groaned. "Aauugh... I can't wear this; everyone will laugh at me..."

"Quit your whining, I know how to fix it" said Mandy, delving into her bag and taking out a pair of scissors and began dancing madly around June snipping and cutting.

"Ookay! First, bye bows!" said Mandy, snipping the bows off.

"Whoa! Hey, watch out!"

"Shut up, I know what I'm doing, now, bye frills!... wait, they look loose enough... maybe if I tug it here..."

RIIIIIIPP

"Oops, maybe not loose enough..."

"Waah! What did you do to my dress?" screamed June, staring at the big gash on the front.

"Chill, look, we take some of the capeeeee... and wrap it around like thiiiiis... and, voila! See! Actually, that looks pretty good"

"Hmm" said June, admiring the bow Mandy tied.

"Okay, now. We gotta make it shorter...aaaand... there!" said Mandy, cutting the dress so it stopped right above the knee.

"Wow... it looks... so cool!"

"I know, I'm awesome, aren't I?" said Mandy. "What would you do-" but whatever June would do became forgotten when a boy and a girl burst unexpectedly through the changing room.

"Hey guys!" said a carmine haired boy with an abomasnow themed sirt. "Seen any gastly around here?"

"Haagh! What the heck? Get out moron, we could have been changing!" screeched Mandy.

"We were just wondering if you had seen any gastly, they kinda floated off, you see..." said a girl with tan brown skin and black and midnight blue hair, wearing a similarly colored dress with a silver sash around it.

"Well, it's a bit stupid looking for ghosts that can go invisible, isn't it?" snapped Mandy.

"Mandy! Stop being mean" said June, she turned to the boy and the girl and smiled. "Well, we haven't seen any gastly here, but if you want I could help you look for them, and say. Aren't you that boy who I battled with the other day?"

"Yep! That's me, Noel!" said Noel, grinning.

"Cool, nice to see you again, Noel" said June, walking out of the room with Noel and the girl.

"So... came here to win an egg?" asked June.

"Nah... Not that into contests, y'know, I came here to see some contest appeals I could maybe use in battle" said Noel.

June nodded and turned to the girl. "I haven't seen you before, what's your name?"

"I'm Aretha, nice to meet you," said Aretha sweetly.

"Mmm... I'm June, so... came here to win an egg?"

"Yup, I've just started being a trainer, but I managed to drum up some good appeals for tonight" she said happily. "Someone told me one of the eggs was a shiny, so, I've decided to give it a go!"

"Oh, wow. A shiny? Those are rare, aren't they?"

Sheeyeee... CRASH...

"Whu... did anyone hear that?" asked June.

"Hear what?" said Noel, cocking his head to one side in confusion.

"The... the screech... and there was a crash... kinda like when you drop a vase and it breaks"

...CLANK...SHEEEYIEEE!

"I heard it! Sounds like it's coming from behind this door" said Aretha, pointing to a large brass door. June, Noel and Aretha pushed the door open and revealed a scene of total chaos.

It looked as if a clawed, fire-breathing tornado had swept what have once may have been a nice dining room, scores of shattered plates, mugs, vases, glasses and teapots filled the ground, the tables had deep scratches and some were on fire, the curtains had been torn to shreds and smoking in some parts, and in the middle of all this chaos was Ukko.

Ukko was being chased by what looked like a pair of floating black beach balls with odd purple smoke drifting eerily off them. One of them would occasionally cackle and beam a black laser from its eyes. Behind them, a charmeleon glowered and blew tall pillars of fire at the two ghosts in annoyance while its trainer, a boy with spiky brown hair, tried to stop them.

"Charmeleon! Come back!" he hollered, trying unsuccessfully to trap him in his ball.

"We can't recall them" said Noel. "They're moving too much!"

"Wait, I've got it!" yelled Aretha through the crash of a broken china set, she fumbled around her bag and pulled out what she had been looking for, a Poké ball with a diamond sticker stuck on the button.

"Right, go Obsie!" she cried, flicking the Poké ball high into the air. The Poké ball glowed white and an enormous rocky snake-like Pokémon materialised from it. "I suggest you cover your ears," she said, covering her own. Everyone copied her.

The onix growled and flicked his tail in annoyance, waiting for the battle commands to be uttered out. "Okay Obsidian, use screech!" happy to obey, the onix smirked and opened his mouth, an ear-splitting screech emanating from the gaping mouth. June and her friends cringed and cowered from the noise, but when obsidian saw this, he smiled and screeched louder.

"Make... him...stop!" screamed June over the racket.

"Obsieee... stop!" yelled Aretha. The huge rock snake stopped and admired his work. The four Pokémon, Ukko, the charmeleon, and the two gastly cowered and shook slightly, the trainers recalled their Pokémon and June picked up Ukko, who was still shivering from the enormous screech obsidian had made.

"Thanks for that" said June happily, scratching Ukko behind his ears.

"No problem" said Aretha.

"Uh... you girls should probably get going," said Noel. "The contest is nearly going to start, and you don't want to be late, right?"

"Right, come on, June!" said Aretha, walking out of the dining hall.

June smiled at her new friend and followed after, onwards to the contest hall.

A/N: Gaah... bit of a rushed ending...


	7. The Diamond Cutters Contest Part Two

A/N: Whoo! A whole lot of OCs in this chapter, enjoy and please tell me if I did a good job with your OCs

"Well, you sure took your time..." grunted Mandy as June and Aretha met her in the contest hall, already in her purple shiny dress. "And who's this?" she asked, motioning towards Aretha.

"Aretha, this is Mandy, Mandy, this is Aretha" said June, gesturing with her hand.

"Hi Mandy!" said Aretha merrily, holding out her hand for Mandy to shake.

"Oh... _hi_" said Mandy coldly, ignoring Aretha's hand. "Anyway June, Where have you been? You can't just decide to wander off in the middle of a contest, what if you miss it? You would have thrown away all those hours of practicing, what were y-"

"Don't nag me, I'm not a little girl" snapped June. "I decide whether I wander off or not, I was helping Aretha and Noel search for their gastly"

Mandy blinked in surprise. "What? Why have you gone all... weird all of a sudden?"

"Maybe I've finally grown" said June simply. "Come on, we have to go, they're gonna start without us" and, taking Aretha's hand she marched off towards the stage.

"Is she always like that?" said Aretha, hurrying beside June.

"Mandy? Yeah, but you get used to it, really" said June.

"I suppose you do" said Aretha.

They reached the stage, and with stage fright already seeping in, they stepped forward.

They were momentarily dazzled by the spotlights shining on them, eventually; they managed to see the oreburgh contest stage in all its glory. A huge, cavernous sphere shaped theatre, with what seemed like thousands of seats at the back where people eagerly watched the enormous coin shaped stage, where around fifteen trainers stood in a row, nervously wringing their hands and gazing over the vast audience. Aretha and June blinked, and ran forward to the stage, where a smart hostess in a flashy pink suit smiled a very toothy smile.

"Aaaand who do we have heeere?" she purred, smiling at the two girls. "Ooh, contestants four and six, no? You're a tad late, naughty!" she said, wagging her finger patronisingly. The audience laughed. "Well, and that is it with our beginning ceremony, and now, let's get this show on the road!" the audience cheered and clapped as one of the spotlights turned toward a long table with three smartly dressed people perching on fancy chairs.

"And these are our fabulous judges, first, our very own Nurse Joy!" the spotlight turned and rested on the face of the very well known pink haired nurse, who smiled politely. "And next is the very experienced contest judge, Miranda Mirabella!" the spotlight turned to light up a slightly elderly woman with heavy makeup and droopy eyelashes.

"I am so glad to be heere" she crooned with a slight Spanish accent. "And finally, our gym leader, Roark!" The spotlight turned again to reveal a very glum-looking Roark, who smiled feebly and waved his hand.

"Hey, any idea why Roark looks so bored?" whispered June while the hostess introduced the three main events.

"I've heard rumours, but I'll tell you later" Aretha replied, her eyes darting over a red faced Mandy entering the stage.

"Our trainers will now ready their Pokémon for the first competition, the appeals show, good luck!" said the hostess with a graceful wave of her hand.

June, Aretha and Mandy sat in the backstage benches, grooming their Pokémon before the much acclaimed appeals show. June and Aretha chatted happily, June attacking Ukko's tuft of hair with a comb and rubbing special oil for grass types on Dancer, making her leafy skin shine. Aretha was cleaning her piplup's feathers with a fuzzy brush. Mandy was sitting a little way off, trying to clean Harkie's fur with a spiky comb.

"Stay still Harkie! Sheesh, how are we supposed to win if your fur looks like a total mess?" grumbled Mandy, trying unsuccessfully to brush dust out of his fur.

"Houndrrrough!" barked Harkie, before viciously attacking the comb and chewing it to smithereens.

"Aww, Harkie... that's the fourth comb you've chewed up this week! Aww shoot, guess I should start working on Alice's scales" said Mandy, releasing her ekans, who greeted her with a flick of her tongue. Mandy smiled and as she sprayed her snake with a purple glittery lotion, her eyes fell wistfully on June and her new friend Aretha.

Her new friend... Mandy's blood boiled, normally she would have been sitting right next to June, telling her all about her spectacular triumphs over the last few weeks, with June nodding and hanging on to Mandy's every word adoringly (she would make sure of that). But because June's pipsqueak friend had decided to sit right next to her, Mandy had had to sit on a grotty bench as farthest away as possible from the two...

Mandy growled, what was up with June lately? She had been acting more... rebellious since she met that Aretha girl, and what was that all about having grown up? Was June breaking off of Mandy? Then she suddenly hit upon a thought...

Was Aretha going to replace her?

She shook the idea off, that was ridiculous! June and Mandy had been inseparable since years ago! June had only met that Aretha girl tonight. Yet she couldn't be sure... she had to prove June that she was a way better friend than Aretha, her mind lingered over to the clothes store they had been in... Of course! She could get June some clothes! After all, she couldn't be walking around with that icky skirt and bow through the whole of Sinnoh, could she? Smiling at her oh-so brilliant plan, she settled down and started to polish Alice's scales.

_Meanwhile..._

"Okay okay, so, I walked into the mansion and this creepy voice started to call out my name and I was freaked out!" said Aretha happily.

"Wait a second; I thought you were going to tell me about why Roark looked so unhappy back at the judge's table! It almost seemed like he didn't like contests or something"

"He doesn't" said Aretha mysteriously.

"What? Then why did he apply for contest-judging?" said June.

"Well, like I said before, they're only rumours, but they might just be true" said Aretha. "Well, what I heard was that Roark met his dad (Byron) a few days ago and somehow they got in battle, the thing was that Roark and Byron would each battle with only one Pokémon, Roark's strongest and Byron's weakest"

"What happened?" asked June.

"Well, Roark lost spectacularly and he was a little down-in-the-dump after the battle, so I'm guessing he came to the diamond cutters to cheer himself up or something"

"Well, it wasn't a very good idea" said June.

"It wasn't, but it might take his mind off the loss... wait, I think the appeals are starting! Come on, let's look" Aretha grabbed her friend excitedly and rushed forward to peek through the door to the stage.

"And, our first contestant is... Alta Reya from Fortree city!" the hostess announced as a girl with blue hair and a white t-shirt and jeans stepped on the stage with a surprisingly calm smile.

"Ria, time to show these individuals our sophisticated contest appeals!" she cried out, throwing a Poké ball into the air.

"Odd way to speak" said Aretha, her eyes fixed on the fluffy altaria materialising from the ball.

"Right, Ria. Use cotton spore!" Alta commanded. The altaria flew up and shook her wings vigorously, cotton puffs fluttering off them.

"Pretty..." drooled June, staring at the fluffy cotton puffs.

"Now, follow up with twister!" Ria nodded and flapped its wings, a twister forming and sucking in the cotton puffs. "And now, sky attack!" the altaria fluttered its wings and began to glow white, then, with surprising speed, charged at the fluffy tornado. Shattering the puffs into silver sparkles that coated Ria.

"Wow, a very good appeal! What are our judges' thoughts about this?" said the hostess, motioning over to the judges.

"Very good! The cotton spore made a great effect when combined with twister" said Nurse Joy.

"Marvellously fluffy and splendid!" crooned Miranda.

"Nice, I guess..." said Roark, fiddling with an odd-coloured rock.

"Well done, Alta. Let's give her a round of applause!" the crowd erupted in applause as Alta nodded politely and recalled her altaria, walking out of the stage and going to the backstage.

"You were pretty good!" said June, smiling warmly at Alta.

Alta smiled at June in a quite a creepy manner. "June Elizabeth Fletcher, or am I mistaken?"

"Um... y-yes?" said June, stepping back a little. "How did you know...?"

"Aha! Nervous and paranoid, also quite nosy" said Alta, whipping out a swablu-patterned notebook and writing on it.

"What? I'm none of those things! I just want to know where you got my name from."

"Impetuous, defensive and decidedly intrusive" wrote Alta. "Your real personality has unfolded! You can never escape me, June Elizabeth Fletcher!" Alta grinned at June and walked off, leaving June and Aretha completely gobsmacked.

"Whoa... who was that?" asked Aretha.

"No idea" said June. "But, come on, let's watch the other appeals"

June and Aretha settled down to watch the appeals comfortably until a guy in a red hat intruded on them.

"Uh, contestant number four?" he said.

"That's me!" said June.

"You're next, okay? Good luck" he said, stalking off.

"Oh my god..." said June, her face turning very white. "I... oh shoot; I don't think I can do this..."

"SHUT UP!" screamed Aretha out of the blue. "You are _not _going to win with that attitude, now, get the heck out there and KILLTHEM!" Aretha shoved a very surprised June out of the door.

"Okay, okay! But let me get my Poké balls first!" June said quickly.

"Here, now shine!" yelled Aretha, chucking June's Poké balls at her.

"Very nice entry, Jessica" congratulated the hostess as a pink faced girl with golden hair walked off the stage. "And now, from Floraroma town, here's June Fletcher!" the crowd clapped encouragingly as June walked forward, her stomach doing a somersault.

She squinted at the audience, feeling her insides twist and turn. Blushing furiously, she picked up Dancer's Poké ball and hurled in the air.

"G-go, Dancer!" she said, the very eager budew materialised in front of her and did a twirl, heightening June's confidence.

"Okay Dancer, spin and use stun spore!" Dancer chirped happily and spun gracefully on one of her stubby feet. The golden spores flew out of Dancer's vines and, as June expected, made a small golden tornado.

"Now, Ukko! Charge!" Ukko leapt onto the stage, his fur crackling with mini electric bolts.

"And... spark!" Ukko grinned and, with his fur being surrounded in near-blinding blue electricity, tackled the tornado, dissipating it and sending bright blue sparks and golden dust all over the stage.

"Wow! I have never seen something like that before!" said the hostess. "And what do our judges think?"

"Excellent! The expert use both the electric sparks with the delicate spores was a complete success!" said Nurse Joy.

"Wonderfully flashy and glittery!" said Miranda.

"Cool" said Roark.

June couldn't have been happier. Beaming, she recalled Dancer and, with a confident bow, picked up Ukko and walked off as the audience clapped.

"Whoooo! That was... scary, but SO AWESOME!" yelled June as she stepped through the door.

"See, I told you!" said Aretha happily, hugging her friend.

"Ahem, excuse, but I'm next, no support for me?" said Mandy, popping up by them.

"Oh, yeah! Sure, uh... good luck and bowl them over" said June. Mandy gave her a long stare before marching off.

"What's up with her?" asked Aretha.

"Just the usual" replied June. "Come on, let's see her appeal!" June and Aretha hurried forward to see through the door, looking at Mandy waltz through the stage with a cocky grin.

"Do you think she has good appeals?" said Aretha.

"Probably" replied June, looking at Mandy's confident grin.

"And now, here's Mandy Peirato from Veilstone city!" said the hostess, Mandy stepped forward and, with a confident smile. Released her ekans and houndour.

"Go, Alice and Harkie!" the dark Pokémon and the snake Pokémon landed gracefully in front of their trainer.

"OK, Harkie, smog! Alice, slither around and use poison sting!" Harkie grinned, and belched out a thick dark smoke. Alice, meanwhile, slithered around the cloud, shaping it into a rough ball shape, and then she fired glowing purple darts at the smoke, shaping it into a heart shape with glowing purple darts around it. The crowd was impressed, even Roark had stopped polishing an odd looking rock to stare at the coal black heart, and, when Mandy thought that things couldn't get any better, disaster struck.

A contestant's pachirisu, who had been sitting in the shadows for quite some time, decided to stretch its legs and play by the curtains of the stage. Harkie saw it first and, feeling a snarl rumbling in his throat, lunged for the pachirisu, stopping the smog and dissipating the heart.

The pachirisu squeaked in terror and ran up the curtains when she saw Harkie running towards her, but Harkie, determined on capturing the pachirisu, shot a badly aimed ember at the pachirisu, who easily dodged it. Unfortunately, the curtains didn't, which caught fire immediately.

"Oh my god..." said June, as a bunch of men desperately tried to put the fire out with fire extinguishers, while Mandy tried to put Harkie back in his Poké ball. Eventually, the fire stopped and Mandy was able to recall both her Pokémon.

"AYIIEE! Look what you've done to my stage!" screeched the hostess, staring at the burnt up curtains.

"I-it was only an accident" muttered Mandy.

"Accident? You! You are disqualified and banned from every contest in Oreburgh for LIFE!" she screamed, pointing an accusing finger at Mandy. "And I don't want to see your face ever again, get out! OUT!" Mandy gave an audible whimper and, with tears streaming down her face ran out of the stage, pushing past Aretha and June and locking herself in the bathroom.

"Mandy! Open the door! Come on, that lady was probably exaggerating!" yelled June.

"Leave me alooooooooone!" whimpered Mandy, practically howling the last word. "I don't want to see anyone ever agaiiiiin!"

"Leave her" said Aretha. "She needs to cool off"

"But Mandy... True, you're right" said June. "Come on; let's watch the rest of the appeals"

"Actually... I think I'm next..." said Aretha. "You were fourth and Mandy must have been fifth and I'm... oh snap, I've gotta go!" and, picking up her Poké balls hastily, ran forward to the stage. June settled down by the door to watch.

"Oh! Right, right, eh... this is Aretha Harbinger from Eterna city!" said the disgruntled hostess, Aretha looked nervously around the vast crowd and, taking a deep breath, released her piplup and gastly.

"Okay Lazuli, bubble! Storm, roll and use night shade!" Lazuli, happy to be involved in something, shot bubbles at Storm, who cackled and began rolling around the air, emitting a black beam from his eyes, when the beam caught contact with the bubbles, something odd happened, the beam seemed to solidify and stuck to the bubbles. The solid beam began wrapping around the gastly, wrapping him in a mass of black bubbles; he continued rolling until he was three times bigger than before.

"Aaand, mean look!" commanded Aretha. The huge black ball stopped spinning and settled on a particular angle and, with a muffled cackle, Storm's eyes glowed a bright purple and, magnified by the countless bubbles, shone through the semi-clear mass of bubbles eerily and June could have sworn that the lights had dimmed, making the huge pair of purple eyes look scarier.

There was a slightly muffled scream from the crowd, Miranda, Nurse Joy and the hostess screamed like little girls while Roark jumped but kept silent, the gastly finally released the bubbles, which exploded in a flurry of purple sparks.

June gulped, she hoped that the judges liked it, she tried to scan their faces to see any trace of anger or disgust and just when she was studying the hostess' small frown the crowd erupted into an uproar, and, to June and Aretha's delight, it was the good sort.

"Wow! In all my years as a hostess, I have never seen something so... scary! What do our judges think?" said the hostess.

"That was a completely refreshing experience! The use of both bubble and night shade combined with the spontaneous result of mean look was invigorating!" said Nurse Joy.

"Splendidly horrifying!" purred Miranda.

"That was pretty good, actually" said Roark, glad to be brought out of his boredom.

Beaming, Aretha picked up her Poké balls and walked briskly out of the stage, meeting June and cheering deafeningly.

Well, to be frank, June was the one cheering the loudest.

"Whoooo! You were awesome! Even Roark loved it!" screamed June. "You are _so _going to get that shiny egg!"

"Come on, I need more than a good appeal to win, in fact, we should be getting ready for the dress up competition" said Aretha seriously, but with a smile on her face. "Besides, there might be no shiny egg at all"

"Oh yeah! The dress up contest! Man... I hadn't thought about that!" said June. "Have you thought of anything?"

"Yup! But I'm not too sure if it will work, I mean, it's going to take up the whole of Lazuli's concentration" said Aretha, resting her chin on her hand thoughtfully.

"Well, at least you have an idea of what you'll be dressing your Pokémon as..." said June, biting her lip.

"Maybe you should take a look at the other trainers' Pokémon, and maybe you'll get an idea of what you would dress your Pokémon as, that's what I did"

"Good idea, hey, could you help me look for an idea?" said June.

"Sure!" said Aretha.

Within minutes, June and Aretha were strolling through the trainers area, examining the trainers Pokémon.

"Well, I don't suppose it's enough to tint Ukko's fur a bit to make him look like a luxio..." muttered June.

"It isn't" said Aretha with a nod. "How about... dressing Dancer up as a happiny?"

"I was wondering that too, but her vines are too big for a happiny's ponytail thing" said June, waving her hands over her head to illustrate her point.

"Come on, it hasn't got to be perfect" said Aretha.

"I know but I want it to be... whoa... wait a second, how about that one?" said June, pointing to a small Pokémon by the windowsill.

"Oh wow, it might just work but... wow, if it works, it'll probably be the best entry... but your budew will need a whole truck full of concentration" said Aretha.

"And balance" said June.

"Yes, and balance" said Aretha. "Tons and tons of balance..."

_Later..._

"Right, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the second part of the diamond cutters contest! The dress up competition! For the ones that don't know already, in the dress up competition, the contestants must use their creativity to transform their Pokémon into entirely different ones! Or so to speak" said the hostess. "Due to some decisions made by our judges, we will be reordering our trainer's competition number, the new order is shown in the big screen"

"Aww crap, I'm third" muttered June, staring at the numbers blinking in the screen "And you're second!"

"Good" said Aretha. "I want to get this as over as fast as possible, I think Lazuli is getting a little itchy. Say, who's first?"

"Um... a boy called Jaden Namikaze... hey, he's on now! Let's watch!" the hurried towards the door to peek at a boy with spiky brown hair and brown eyes with a black shirt, red jacket, black pants, black and red sneakers and a red hat stand in the middle of the stage with what seemed to be a tiny milotic slithering around him.

"Our first entry is Jaden Namikaze with his dratini!" announced the hostess.

"Wow! The likeness is impressive!" commented June.

The dratini stopped slithering around and shot a small squirt of water from her mouth adorably, making the audience go "aww..."

The hostess smiled an ample smile "Well, very nice! A milotic! What do the judges think?"

"It is very nice, but the fins in the sides of her head are a little big..." said Nurse Joy.

"So what? How else is he supposed to hide the wing things on the side of her head?" protested June a little loudly.

"Adorably believable!" said Miranda.

"Cute" said Roark. Jaden grinned and picked up his dratini, a smile shining out from his face. He turned and walked out of the stage.

"You're up next!" said June, nudging her friend. Aretha nodded and walked forward.

"And here is Aretha Harbinger with her piplup!" said the hostess. Gulping, Aretha stepped forward.

"Okay Lazuli, come out!" she said, Lazuli the piplup came out painted a bright orange, with odd ruffles of yellow feathers around her neck and a yellow and orange flame-shaped crest stuck to her head, Aretha took some red balloons with a flame symbol on them.

"Lazuli, use peck!" said Aretha, throwing the balloons in the air, Lazuli chirped happily and, with a glowing beak, punctured them neatly, the balloons exploded and red, orange and yellow ember-like confetti fluttered down, making it look as if Lazuli had spat embers out.

"Wow! That torchic certainly is believable! What do our judges think?" announced the hostess.

"Very creative! Not only is the torchic believable, but the flame confetti was a very creative touch!" said Nurse Joy.

"Stunningly creative!" said Miranda.

"Pretty" said Roark.

June stopped looking at Aretha and turned towards her budew.

"Dancer, are you sure you can do this?" asked June. "If you can't, don't worry, ok?" Dancer looked up at her trainer, who looked down at her with concern on her face, she wasn't sure if she could do it, and balancing in that teeny platform June had put her was taking up most of her concentration, she sighed, but nodded, seeing her trainer's pleading eyes.

June brightened up. "Great! And, could you maybe please hop around a bit? It would be awesome, I mean, you only have to give a big hop and your disguise will do the rest" again, Dancer nodded.

"Great! I knew I could trust you!" said June and gave her a very careful hug so not to ruin her disguise. "Hey, here comes Aretha! Okay, you come in when I tell you to, Okay?" and with a smile on her face, June rushed past Aretha.

"Okay, and here is June Fletcher with her budew!" announced the hostess. June's grin spread out further and, with a swift wave of her hand, called Dancer up to the stage.

Dancer stood still for a few seconds, she wanted to make June happy, of course she did, but it was so difficult moving around... but, sensing her trainer's worry, gave a gigantic hop and bounced towards the stage...

Dancer's skin had been dyed black, except for the bud on her head, which was tinted a pearly pink, June had cut out two felt triangles and stuck them to the sides of her vines to look like ears, and a second pair to act as arms, and a small pig's snout stuck where her nose would be. But what was more striking about the disguise was the bottom part. Using some thick wire, a block of wood and black silk, June and Aretha had constructed a spring with a small platform, where Dancer could just balance herself covered by a 'dress' of black silk to hide Dancer's feet.

"WOW! I haven't seen any spoink disguises since... well, I haven't seen any in the whole of my career!" said the hostess, clapping her hands together in delight. "I certainly want to hear what our judges have to say about this!"

"Amazing! Not only is the spoink believable, but her budew must love her trainer a lot to balance in that small platform and even bounce around!" said Nurse Joy, giving Dancer a wink.

"Bouncingly believable!" crooned Miranda.

"Complex" said Roark, frowning at the tiny platform Dancer was standing in. June let out a half choked giggle and, picking Dancer up carefully, ran out of the stage where Aretha was already cleaning Lazuli up.

"Hold still, Lazuli... ah, now you've smudged your feathers on that side! Oh, hey! Here's June!" Aretha nudged Lazuli off her lap and went to meet her friend. "Well, what did the judges think?"

"Heheh... they liked it" giggled June. "Phew! That was scary! I thought Dancer was going to fall! She nearly fell off at the first bounce but from then on it was pretty smooth" June's smile widened and she gave her budew a cuddle. "Okay, better clean you up, right?" she let Dancer drop from the hug and giggled as she leapt off the platform and began to shake the decorations off vigorously, she took some special liquid soap and began washing away at Dancer's tinted skin.

"Hmm... June, who are you gonna use for the contest battle?" asked Aretha, washing what remained of the orange tint off Lazuli.

"Uh... I think Moon..." said June, cursing herself inwardly for not knowing what a contest battle was.

"Oh, I'm using Storm... OW! Hey, what was that for?" screeched Aretha after getting a sharp peck from her piplup.

"Piiip, Piplupip!" yelled Lazuli angrily, waving her flippers around.

"Uh... you want to be in the contest battle?" guessed Aretha.

Lazuli shook her head. "Piiip, pluuupiplup" she said.

"Sorry, I don't speak Pokémon" said Aretha with a smile, her piplup sighed and leapt off her lap.

"Anyway, I should get Moon ready" June said, she picked up Moon's Poké ball and released her. "Are ya ready to do a contest battle?" said June happily. Moon gave her a sharp glare.

"Glah...Memeow" said Moon, eyeing June nastily.

"Great!" said June happily. "Okay, how about if I start by spraying this glitter on your f-OUCH!" June leapt backwards, thin red lines from Moon's scratch had etched themselves onto her skin painfully. "Okay, maybe no glitter this time..."

_Later..._

"Okay, contest fans, we have reached the final event for the diamond cutters contest, the contest battle! In this event, our contestants will battle using moves that exemplify beauty and flair!" announced the hostess, she then motioned to the large screen with a manicured hand. "Here are the contestants battle rivals for this event" the screen flickered and showed a considerably low amount of trainers, which were organised in pairs, connected by a thin red line.

"Hm... I'm first" announced Aretha blankly, staring at the screen.

"Who are you battling with?" asked June, looking at her own picture. "I'm with a kid called Roxas"

"I'm with Aaron" Aretha replied. "I should go now, look, he's already on the stage!" Aretha pointed at a brown haired boy with a silver button up with undershirt, grey pants with a black belt and a silver hat.

"Oh... he looks tough" said June, biting her lip.

"Yes, but toughness isn't everything, you don't need to be too tough for a contest battle" replied Aretha confidently, she then turn and walked towards the stage.

"Good luck!" yelled June behind her, she watched as Aretha walked towards the stage and stopped opposite to him.

"Right, first we have Aaron from metropolis town and Aretha from Eterna city!" announced the hostess. "The trainers will each have a determined amount of time to battle, and, let's begin!"

"Right magnezone, Game on!" Aaron took a Poké ball from his belt and threw it in the air, a vaguely UFO-like Pokémon materialising from it.

"Wow! A magnezone!" said June happily, registering it in her Sinnoh dex.

"Ok, Storm, do your best!" Aretha called out her gastly, who circled her head before settling down to glare at his opponent.

"Magnezone, use hidden power!" the magnezone span slightly and twelve glowing spheres began to rotate around it, and then they turned to icy spheres, which launched themselves at Storm.

"Use confuse ray!" Storm released a purple glowing orb from its forehead and launched it at the icy hidden power, the spheres stopped and, with the confuse ray guiding them, turned and headed towards the magnezone.

"Hyper beam!" yelled Aaron, but as the magnezone charged its attack, the purple glowing icy spheres hit his magnezone, making him wobble in the air.

"No! Use hidden power and thunder bolt!" yelled Aaron urgently, his magnezone emitted a low buzzing sound and once again, the glowing spheres began spinning around the magnezone and turned to ice, then the magnezone unleashed a thunderbolt together with the icy spheres, Aretha gulped, she knew it would take more than a simple confuse ray.

"Eh... Night shade and hypnosis!" she yelled feebly. Storm's eyes glowed red and unleashed black circles that expanded as they left his eyes, he then followed up with a black beam that shot through the very centre of the circles, making it look as if though they were black rings threaded through with black string, the combined beam hit the thunder-ice bolt, clashing together and shooting sparks at the centre of the two meeting beams.

"Storm, think you can make another confuse ray?" whispered Mandy worriedly, the gastly nodded and unleashed the purple glowing ball at the centre of the beam, which started to spin rapidly over the very centre of the clashing beams, strengthening Storm's black beam and pushing it towards the magnezone, hitting it with a loud bang.

"Time up!" announced the hostess. "Let's see the scores!" everyone turned towards the giant screen. "And, Aretha Harbinger wins this round!" Aretha cheered as she recalled her gastly, and ran out of the stage, meeting June.

"Yes! I won!" said Aretha happily. "I thought I wasn't going to for a moment, that was scary!"

"It sure was!" said June. "Oh wait, I'm next!" June picked Moon's Poké ball hastily and ran towards the stage, where a boy with red spiky hair, black long sleeved shirt, green shorts and a long red scarf.

"Okay, next we have June from Floraroma City and Roxas from Celadon city!" announced the hostess.

"Okay Rimochi, battle time!" Roxas yelled out, calling out a Flareon with a headband wrapped around his left front leg. June gulped.

"Erm... Moon, come on out!" said June nervously, her glameow shot out of her Poké ball and settled in front of her.

"Right Rimochi, flamethrower!" the flareon took a deep breath and shot a wide fiery beam from his mouth, so hot that the air around it went remarkably warm.

"Okay Moon, use scratch!" Moon took no notice of her trainer's command, instead the leapt through the air and dipped the puffy end of her tail in the beam, she winced in pain but struck Rimochi in the face with her burning tail. As the flareon recovered from the violent hit Moon walked towards it and winked charmingly at the flareon, catching him in her charm attack.

"No! What are you doing?" yelled June.

"Rimochi! Snap out of it!" yelled Roxas, but his flareon paid no attention, preferring to stare lovingly at Moon, Moon grinned and leant closer to him, muttering something and pointing to the far end of the stage, Rimochi looked at the place where Moon was pointing at obediently.

Moon's smile widened as Rimochi was distracted and struck him hard with her paw, cackling cruelly and she watched the poor stunned flareon get up, trembling slightly. The flareon turned towards Moon and tried to sink his fangs into her leg, but Moon dodged it and scratched him viciously.

"Time up!" announced the hostess. "Now, let's see who won this contest!" she turned towards the screen. "June Fletcher is the winner!" June looked up; her points had been deducted considerably from Moon's disobedience, and had only _just_ won over Roxas' team, nodding apologetically to Roxas, recalled her glameow and ran out of the stage.

"Wha... what was that all about?" asked Aretha as June walked through the door.

"Uh... things went a little bit out of control back there..." said June feebily.

"I realised that" said Aretha. June nodded and called out her glameow.

"Moon! What was that all about?" she asked her angrily, Moon glared at her and stalked off with her tail in the air. "Moon, come back now!" scolded June as fiercely as she could, but Moon just shook her head and climbed out of June's reach.

"Your glameow has a serious attitude problem" said Aretha disapprovingly.

"_I realised that..._"

_later..._

"Okay, contest fans; we have seen some stunning appeals, glorious disguises and beautiful battles" said the hostess, smiling a very pearly smile. "Since the Pokémon centre has kindly given us three Pokémon eggs, we will nominate the three trainers with the highest scores!" the hostess smiled and motioned to the big screen, where three trainer silhouettes stood ominously.

"Mh... oh snap, I hope I win..." whispered June at Aretha, nervously biting her lower lip.

"Same here..." said Aretha.

"I'm probably not going to win, thanks to miss Moon's battle" June said acidly.

"You never know" replied Aretha, her eyes fixed on the screen.

"Okay, now in third place, we have..." said the hostess, the lights dimming and the spotlights turning a serious indigo. The hostess let the suspense grow until it was unbearable and finally announced. "June Fletcher!"

June froze, had it been her imagination? She stared at the screen to see her smiling picture and sure enough, it was, with a bronze coloured three by it. Shaking, she walked slowly towards the stage, the bright spotlights temporarily blinding her, and received her ribbon, a diamond shaped bronze coloured emblem with two long red and gold ribbons, and a red egg with orange swirls in the top and bottom.

_HOLY CRAAAP! I WOOON! _She screamed inwardly. _HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? _She turned towards Aretha, who gave her a cheery thumbs up. June giggled stupidly and smiled, feeling a little dizzy.

"In second place we have... Jessica Lilybay!" a girl with long golden hair and a frothy pink dress jumped and walked forward, her face turning as pink as her dress, she received her egg, which was a yellow one with brown streaks around the middle, she received her ribbon, which was almost the same as June but silver instead of bronze and smiled.

"Oh wow, I wonder who's in first place" she whispered to June, June nodded and stared straight ahead.

"And finally, in first place, we have... Aretha Harbinger!" June jumped and looked in surprise at her friend, who looked equally shocked. Aretha gulped, and walked nervously toward the stage, where the hostess gave her a white egg with big blue spots and small orange spots. Aretha smiled at June happily, June's face mirroring hers.

_Later..._

June and Aretha had already changed into their daily wear, Aretha wearing navy shirt with a silver crescent in the middle and light blue jeans, with silver converses and June had changed into her ordinary green and pink outfit, they smiled, admiring each other's eggs.

"Wow, I still can't believe they gave us these!" said June happily, admiring her red and orange egg. "Mine feels really warm... wonder what it is?"

"I know!" said Aretha, stroking lightly the smooth shell of her egg. "What kind of Pokémon do you think mine is?"

"Bet it's a squirtle, they're blue and orange, right?" said June, running her finger along the orange curls of her egg.

"But where would all this white come from?" said Aretha, motioning to her egg. "I think it's a mudkip, they're blue and orange and have whitish undersides..."

"Oh dear... I know what your egg is, _Aretha..._" said a familiar voice behind her, making Aretha jump.

"Oh, hey Mandy, feeling better after your loss?" asked Aretha.

"I know what it is, want me to tell you?" asked Mandy with a slight sneer, ignoring Aretha's question.

"Ok, what is it?" asked June, Mandy's sneer widened and she whipped out her red Pokédex, the picture of a blue serpentine Pokémon with a huge jaw and orange and white spots along its body flashing in the screen.

"A huntail, tsk... what a pity" said Mandy, snapping the Pokédex shut. "The ugliest and more useless Pokémon in the whole world, along with feebas and magikarp"

"But I heard that huntails are very strong. And anyway, feebas and magikarp evolve into pretty strong and beautiful Pokémon" said June.

"Shush" snapped Mandy, but the she brightened up, smiling at June sweetly. "Congrats on your victory, dear! And to celebrate, I bought you some clothes!" she grinned as she whipped out a clothes bag and pushed it towards June rather forcibly. "Don't worry about the price, you deserve it, Juney" June looked at her uncertainly and dove her hand into the bag.

June pulled out a small white t-shirt with a turquoise star in the middle and long rainbow coloured sleeve, a denim skirt, white socks and white trainers with a plastic rainbow badge-like symbol in the backs, and even a new big white cotton handbag, inside she found a white coat with rainbow coloured fluff around the hood and a large silver g-clef shaped clip, almost as big as her bow.

"Wow! These are... thanks!" said June, leaning forward to give her a hug, which Mandy avoided.

"Ya' welcome" said Mandy. "Hey, can I see your egg?" she said, snatching it off June before she could reply. She put her blue head on the top of the egg, as if listening to the inside. "Aww, how cute, I can hear it mewling!" she thrust the egg towards June's ear so she could listen too, and sure enough, there was a faint whining noise coming from the inside. Aretha tried to listen to her own egg.

"Hm... I can't hear mine..." she said, a little disappointed by this fact.

"Maybe it's asleep" said Mandy and, without warning, snatched the egg off Aretha and began screaming at it, while shaking it violently. "WAKE UP HUNTAIL! WAKE UP UGLY USELESS-"

"Mandy!" yelled June, snatching the egg off her and giving it to Aretha "Don't do that! Can't you try being nice for once?"

"So what? It's only a huntail..." said Mandy sheepishly.

"So what? What do you mean so what? It's a live Pokémon! Don't you have any respect for that?" said June angrily, her temper finally drawn out.

"Oh, so that's how you thank me for the clothes I bought you? Well, fine!" yelled Mandy angrily.

"Take your clothes, I don't want them anymore" said June, thrusting the clothes bag towards Mandy.

"Keep them" hissed Mandy poisonously, and before anyone could stop her she called out her skarmory and climbed on his back. "I'm way too pretty for them anyway. Come on, Morty, let's go back to Hearthome and challenge Fantina again" she chucked the clothes bag forcefully at June's face and flew off into the air and out of view. June looked at the sky and sighed.

"...I blew it, now she won't ever talk to me again and no one will accompany me on my journey" muttered June dolefully.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that" said Aretha. "I was wondering if... maybe we could travel through Sinnoh together, I mean, it's much safer that way..."

June looked at Aretha with surprise. "I... er, of course!" Aretha grinned and gave her friend a careful hug so as not to squash their eggs.

"Come on June, we should go to the Pokémon centre, it's really late and we should get some sleep" said Aretha, walking towards the Pokémon centre. "Aren't you coming? Come on!" June smiled at Ukko, who sat right underneath her, Ukko returned the smile.

"I have to say, things couldn't get any better, right Ukko?" she said.

"Shinx, inxinx!" said Ukko happily, June's smile widened and trotted towards Aretha.

A/N: Alta belongs to altariafan, Aaron belongs to certain destiny, Jaden belongs to slayerboy929 and Roxas belongs to certain destiny.


	8. Coal Badges And Tasty Thieves

A/N: Thanks for all the comments, seriously, you guys rock!

Eva belongs to Lycramosa.

June yawned and forced her eyelids open; she shifted in the hard bed of the Pokémon centre and smiled, remembering her victory at the diamond cutters.

"Morning, Ukko..." she said sleepily.

No answer.

June frowned and sat upright. She scanned the room. There was no sign of Ukko, and even worse, no sign of her egg. She quickly jumped to her feet and began looking for it, under the bed, inside her old bag and even inside her new one, she wondered if the little Pokémon had hatched while she had been asleep and wanted to stretch its legs and walk out of her room, and maybe Ukko had followed him/her to keep an eye on him/her, Maybe Aretha had seen them!

Forgetting that she was still in her pyjamas, June ran out of the room and into Aretha's room, but her room was empty, even the bed had been made; she was about to head toward the door when she saw an odd shaped shadow in the corner. She turned towards the shadow, which cackled and floated towards her.

"Storm, I know it's you" said June, crossing her arms. "You might have scared the living death out of me last night when I went to get some water, but it doesn't work in the daylight" the shadow shook and finally returned to his original gastly shape, looking a little disappointed. June smiled. "Do you know where my shinx is? Or your trainer?" Storm grinned and nodded. "Cool, can you show me where they are?"

"Gaast!" it said happily and disappeared out of view.

June sighed, making a mental note to not trust any ghost whatsoever. Realising she was still in her pyjamas she ran back to her room, had a quick shower and put new clothes on, which she was happy to see, were a perfect fit. She walked outside and found Storm floating just beside her.

June frowned "Are you going to show me where they are?" Storm nodded and floated in front of her, leading June through a series of corridors until reaching a door, Storm cackled and floated in circles around June's waist before vanishing into thin air.

Sighing, June opened the door, revealing the Pokémon centre's backyard, inside, Aretha and her Pokémon were training and Ukko was dozing on a sunny patch of grass, his body carefully curled around the two eggs as best as he could.

"Oh, hi June!" said Aretha cheerfully "Great! You found Storm; he sneaked out when I was training with Lazuli and Obsie. And Ukko has been a very good babysitter, by the way" upon hearing his name, Ukko stirred awake and, seeing June, flipped her egg on his back with a clever flick of his tail and walked towards June, careful to not let the egg drop.

"Hi Ukko, been taking care of your new team mate?" said June, scooping the egg from Ukko's back and giving him a scratch behind his ear. June felt an odd breeze by her ear and turned to see Storm float towards his trainer. "Uh, Aretha? You haven't been training for too long, have you? I made that mistake not too long ago"

"Nah, I've just started training about half an hour ago, I asked Ukko if he wanted to join, but it seems he didn't want to start without you" said Aretha, picking up her own egg and dusting it off. "I was wondering if I could challenge Roark today"

"Already?" said June. "But we've just come from the diamond cutters!"

Aretha shrugged "Well, if you don't want to come..."

"No, I do" said June quickly. "That was one of the only reasons why I wanted to go to Oreburgh, I er... hadn't heard of the diamond cutters until Mandy told me, I just thought that my Pokémon might be... tired after the contest"

Aretha nodded. "I understand, but I think that they might have already rested up here, and I've stocked up on potions just in case"

"So are we going?"

"Yeah!"

_Ten minutes later..._

"Aretha, admit it, were lost"

"No we're not"

"Yes we are, we've passed this place nine times!" June insisted, pointing to a store with a big cardboard jigglypuff on the front.

"Well, it's not my fault your sinnoh dex has errors" said Aretha, crossing her arms.

"And it's not my fault that you left your own PokéDex back at the Pokémon centre" said June. "Let's just ask someone if they know where the gym is" June looked around and trotted over to a woman with a large hat. "Um... excuse me, where is the gym?" the woman turned around and glared at June, her very long purple hair framing an almost ghost-like face.

"Get out of my sight, stupid child" she said in a hoarse whisper. June yelped and ran away to Aretha.

"Eh... maybe we should just look for a map" said June, she watched as the rude woman picked what looked like a high-tech walkie-talkie and spoke to it, keeping an eye on June.

"What happened?" asked Aretha.

"Nothing, nothing... it's your turn to ask somebody" said June quickly. Aretha shrugged and walked towards a girl with light brown hair and a gothic Lolita style shirt and black pants, she was cuddling a cubone, so Aretha guessed she would be friendly.

"Hey!" said Aretha brightly. "I was wondering if you knew where the gym is" the girl turned around slowly, staring at Aretha with striking brown eyes.

"Yes" she said.

"Oh, great, um... could you please tell me where it is?" said Aretha. The girl didn't answer, simply just cocking her head towards a huge rocky building to her right. Aretha nodded a quick thank you and rushed off to June's side.

"Well...?" said June.

"Um, apparently, it's that place" said Aretha pointed towards the rocky building, watching the odd girl walk towards it.

"Well, let's go" said June, dragging Aretha towards the place, she stood outside the very rocky building. "Aretha, this can't be it, looks as though someone just put a door in front of a huge rock"

"Well, the guy has a thing for rocks, he probably designed this place to look like one" said Aretha, crossing her arms. The entered the door, stepping into what seemed like a long dark tunnel with thousands of little torches stuck on its walls, the tunnel walls were decorated with glittering rows of fake spheres, and even rows of fake Styrofoam fossils, painted to look like the real thing, the tunnel ended abruptly and in its place, a huge circular coliseum with tall jagged rocks littering the middle. At the far corner, June could make out Roark's body, standing proudly with a cranidos sitting beside him.

"Welcome! This is the Oreburgh Pokémon gym! I'm Roark, the gym leader, now" Roark leant closer to examine the two girls. "Who will be challenging me today?"

"Eh... Aretha and June" said Aretha, walking forward and tugging June along with her.

"Hmm, the two winners at the contest, huh?" said Roark, thinking that beating a bunch of starting coordinators would be easy. "This battle shall be... interesting, you will pick three of your Pokémon to battle against my own, understood?"

"Right" said June, she whispered to Aretha about which Pokémon they would be using and finally decided on Dancer, Storm and Lazuli. (Although Ukko complained when he saw that he wouldn't be included). They both gave Roark a thumbs-up to show that they had decided and ran over to the other side of the battle field, a guy with mining helmet walked and settled in the middle of the stage, holding two flags, one green and one red.

"The battle begins! Roark, the gym leader against challengers June and Aretha!" yelled the judge, signalling to Roark and the duo. "Now, let the battle begin!"

"Come on out, geodude!" yelled Roark, tossing a Poké ball in the air, a rock-like Pokémon with two large arms materialised in front of them, glowering at both of them.

Aretha picked up a Poké ball and hurled it towards the battlefield. "Time to battle, Storm!" Storm floated around the battlefield and settled in front of the girls, glaring at the geodude.

"Now geodude, rock throw!" yelled Roark, geodude pounded his fists into the ground, sending huge rocks flying towards Storm.

"Confuse ray!" Storm unleashed the well known purple orb at the rocks, circling them and leading them towards the geodude.

"Catch them, quick!" the geodude propelled itself off the ground with a mighty thump of his hands and launched himself at the rocks, catching them and throwing them at Storm.

Aretha gasped "Night shade!" Storm unleashed a black ray from its eyes, cutting cleanly through the boulders and hitting the geodude.

"Hold on there, use stealth rock and rock throw!" geodude's body became encircled with white shards that flew over to June's side, and then geodude began hurling rocks rapidly at Storm, failing to hit the ghost.

"Now, lick!" storm cackled and disappeared, only to reappear by geodude and licking it with a long pink tongue. The geodude cringed and fainted.

"Gym leader Roark's geodude is unable to battle!" announced the judge, waving his red flag towards Roark. Roark cursed under his breath and quickly recalled his Pokémon, he threw another Poké ball into the air, this time a huge rocky serpent appearing by him.

"Let's end this quickly, onix, screech, then rock throw!" the onix opened its mouth, and a horrible ear-splitting scream filled the battlefield, similar to Obsidian's. The gastly stopped and began shaking around, stunned by the huge outburst of sound. Meanwhile the onix slammed its tail in the battlefield and whacked a big boulder at Storm, crushing him under it.

"The opponent's gastly cannot battle anymore!" yelled the judge, pointing the red flag towards Aretha. Aretha recalled her Pokémon wistfully and watched as June released her budew.

"Time to go, Dancer!" she yelled, watching as the little bud Pokémon hopped towards the onix bravely, but the stealth rocks in the ground speared into Dancer, leaving her extremely weak. "Absorb!" Dancer giggled softly and unleashed a red orb from her vines that floated over the onix. Red orbs began flowing out of his body and into Dancer, who looked stronger the more orbs flew out of the onix. The onix shrieked in pain and tried to weakly bat a boulder towards Dancer but she just gingerly hopped to one side, within long, the rock snake Pokémon had collapsed to the ground with a loud thump before fainting.

"Gym leader Roark's onix is unable to battle!" announced the judge, waving his red flag towards Roark.

Roark groaned and called out his last Pokémon, a cranidos who as soon as he saw Dancer it let out a loud roar and charged for her, Dancer just grinned and stepped to one side, merely avoiding the rock hard cranium, but the cranidos spun on one feet and struck Dancer hard with the spikes on the back of his head, sending Dancer flying.

"Dancer, no! Use absorb!" yelled June, Dancer got up, her tiny legs trembling, but she faced the cranidos and unleashed the glowing red orb from her head towards the cranidos, but he just leapt and head-butted the sphere towards a rock.

"Ok, now, leer and headbutt!" the cranidos roared and leered at Dancer, his eyes glowing red and freezing budew with fright, then he turned towards her and charged, ramming his head on her body.

"The opponent's budew is unable to battle!" yelled the judge. June sighed and recalled her motionless budew, muttering a quick 'well done', Aretha nodded at her and released their last Pokémon, Lazuli.

"Shatter him, Lazuli!" yelled Aretha as the piplup flapped her wings, obviously glad to be out of her Poké ball.

"Quick, use headbutt!" yelled Roark. The cranidos grunted and thrust its head to meet Lazuli's body, sending her flying.

"Come on Laz... bubble, quick!" Lazuli got up weakly and blew bubbles at cranidos furiously, the cranidos screeched with pain as the bubbles made contact. This pleased Lazuli, and continued blowing bubbles at the cranidos.

"Pursuit out of the firing line!" yelled Roark. The cranidos roared and ran out of the firing line as quickly as possible, its body glowing with dark energy. "Pursuit!" cranidos grunted and ran towards Lazuli.

"Peck!" Lazuli's beak glowed white and extended, thrusting herself at the cranidos. As the two energies, the black from pursuit and the white from peck made contact, a huge explosion erupted in the battlefield, shrouding the battlers in dust, as the dust cleared, they saw a bright light shining from the inside and instead of a piplup, a prinplup was standing in her place, proudly beaming over the unconscious body of the cranidos.

"Gym leader Roark's cranidos is unable to battle" said the judge monotonously. "Opponents Aretha and June win" June squealed and jumped happily on the spot like a little kid that had just received a prize while Aretha grinned and welcomed her prinplup. Roark stared at them, first in surprise, then confusion, and finally disappointed shock.

_I... can't believe I lost to silly little contestants... _he thought miserably, watching the girl with the rainbow sleeves hug her sulky shinx excitedly. _Maybe... I really am that weak. _He sighed and tossed two small parcels to the girls blankly. "Inside are the coal badge and the TM stealth rock" he watched the girls each cheer in their own way and walk away.

"Thanks, Roark! You're really good!" piped up a girl's voice, Roark turned around to find the rainbow girl smile at him sweetly. "You really gave us a hard time"

"I did? That's nice to hear" said Roark warmly, a smile reappearing on his face. June nodded and ran off to meet her blue and black haired friend, chatting happily along the way.

"Phew! That was intense!" said June, stretching her arms as though she had been the one fighting.

"Yeah, that was refreshing!" said Aretha happily, taking out a piece of cloth and polishing the shiny shell on her egg. "Say, I hope the little Pokémon inside this egg is a mudkip, what do you think yours is?"

June shrugged "I'm not too sure, but I think it's a spearow, they're brown and red, aren't they?"

"But that looks more like orange" said Aretha, stroking the curly orange parts. "Hmm, we should be careful, things are getting really crowded and we don't want to squish our eggs, do we?"

Indeed they were, they had soon stepped in a vastly crowded area, people around them shuffled and pushed, often not even apologising to the others. June and Aretha walked through the street, holding their eggs over their heads and Ukko jumped to June's shoulder to avoid being trampled by the multitude of feet.

"'Scuse me" grunted a man in odd black clothes pushing roughly past Aretha and June and shoving them into a crowd of enraged people, they quickly stood up and brushed themselves off, glowering at the man.

"Well, talk about rude" muttered Aretha, dusting her jeans off.

"I know! That idiot almost ripped my clip off, a button got caught in it as well!" said June, picking the man's button off her clip, as she was examining it she noticed something was wrong.

_Very _wrong.

June jumped and stared at her hands in disbelief, the egg was gone! Had she dropped it? she seemed to have a talent for dropping things, she wondered if Ukko had seen it, so she turned around to ask him, but to her horror, Ukko was gone as well.

"A-Aretha! My egg, I think I dropped it, Ukko's missing too!" said June in a hoarse whisper, Aretha turned around to face her, her face pale.

"Mine too, but... I wouldn't have dropped it just like that" said Aretha.

"Maybe we dropped it when that guy barged in on us..." said June, looking worriedly at the ground.

"Or maybe that guy stole it" said Aretha, her voice sounding serious. She was about to run towards the odd guy when a voice interrupted her.

"E-excuse me, have you seen... a cubone with a big crack in the skull?" said a shy-sounding voice. Aretha and June turned around to find a girl, who Aretha recognised as the gothic Lolita girl with the cubone from earlier, staring wistfully at them, her eyes with tears on them.

"No, but we have an idea of where he might be" said June.

"She" corrected the girl. "What are we waiting for, where is she?"

"We think and odd guy in black took her, did a guy wearing odd black clothes bump into you?" asked Aretha.

"No, but I saw a woman dressed in black" replied the girl, her sad expression transformed into anger and she bolted off toward the path the two black-clad people had come from. "Siree! Wait for me!" she yelled, pushing people away as she ran in pursuit of the two thieves, June nodded at Aretha and set off after them.

_Five minutes later..._

"... I can't run anymore" gasped June, stopping down to try and relieve the stitch on her side.

"But if we don't run Ukko, Siree and our eggs will be lost..." said Aretha, then her eyes widened, she had just thought of something. "Hey June, ever rode on an onix?"

June frowned "Riding on Obsie? But, can he really go that fast? I mean, I've heard onix can tunnel really fast, but can it do the same on land?"

"It must" said Aretha, watching the brunette chase after the thieves tirelessly. "Wonder where she gets all her stamina?" Aretha withdrew a Poké ball from her bag and released the rocky snake Pokémon from inside, who roared happily and flicked the tip of his tail from side to side. "Right Obsie, we need you to follow those people" Aretha pointed towards the thieves. "And could you pick up that girl too?" Obsie nodded and lowered his head so June and Aretha could settle (uncomfortably) on the top of his head and gripped the horn on his head.

"Weird, why's the horn a little... glassy?" said June, her fingers sliding slightly off the horn, Aretha was about to answer when a loud mechanical voice interrupted her.

"AS THE ONIX GROWS, ITS BODY HARDENS TO BECOME SIMILAR TO BLACK DIAMONDS, STARTING BY THE HORN ON TOP OF IT'S HEAD" beeped the sinnoh dex, causing June to kick it with her foot.

"Sorry, it's been doing that since Storm got hold of it" said June, a sheepish smile on her face.

"It's okay" said Aretha, she patted the huge rocky head. "Right Obsie, can you chase after them?" Obsie grunted in response. Aretha smiled. "I'll take that as a yes, now... GO!" Obsie roared happily and began to make its way through the field, his long body twisting and turning much like a snake does when on the ground, he was surprisingly fast to be an underground Pokémon.

"WAH! Slow do-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-n!" screamed June as the onix tore through some bumpy ground, he growled at June and shook his horn, making June grip it with both her arms and feet to avoid being shaken off.

"Please don't do that again" whined Aretha. "But don't worry, we're almost there" Aretha pointed with some difficulty at the two rushing shapes. Obsie screeched happily and sped up, then circled the runners with his huge body, cutting off any escape routes, Aretha patted Obsie's horn and leapt off his head, landing almost catlike on the floor, while June tried the same trick but landed flat on her back with a thump. The thieves had huddled together in fear while the brunette girl screamed in fury and charged at them.

"Give me back my cubone! NOW!" she yelled, raising her fists in the air, but the thieves snickered and pulled out a stout book-like object and shot a blue beam from the top, engulfing the girl in a blue bubble and raising her up and out of anybody's reach, she roared in anger and thrashed about in the bubble, but all in vain.

"Ha! You think you can stop our master plan? Silly girl" snickered the man, a hint of fear on his voice.

"Yeah, I don't know how that could have happened before, heheh..." giggled the woman nervously, she picked up a gun-shaped device and pointed at the two girls. "Right kiddies, get this snake thing out off my path, or you guys will suffer the consequences..." she grinned and pointed the gun at a rock and fired a black beam that melted it almost instantly.

"That's right, you heard Clover, now, clear our path" said the man, withdrawing a similar device and pointing it at the girls. "I can easily melt you like... like butter in the hood of a car! On a sunny day!"

June, Aretha and the girl exchanged looks. "Uh... we aren't going anywhere without our Pokémon" said Aretha, the two thieves blinked in surprise, they obviously weren't expecting that reaction.

"Er... w-well, I WILL do it! Just because we've just started doesn't make us any inferior from the other grunts!" said the man nervously, he pressed a button on the device but Obsie just growled moodily, batted it off his hands and crushed it with his tail.

"Argh! Spear, you idiot! Don't you know how much those magmarizer beams cost?" squealed his partner angrily, she then took her own magmarizer beam and pointed it at the girl. "Right, get this snake off our way or your friend here will be turned into mega heated goo!"

June and Aretha stared at Clover. "You wouldn't dare" they chorused.

"Oh I would" she replied happily. "So, move this snake, NOW" Obsie glared at her, he was tired of being called a snake, he was an onix, for crying out loud! In the past royalty were carried around on a mature onix's back, the onix's body like black diamonds gleamed royally, and these jerks were insulting it by calling it _snake? _He wasn't going to allow this, oh no he wasn't...

Before anyone could stop him, Obsie roared and flicked his tail around the two thieves, lifting them up and lowering them to his eyes, glaring at them wrathfully. The man screamed and ducked under the rocky coils, while the woman screamed and attempted to fire her black beam at Obsie, but missed and dropped it, Obsie growled, staring at the black-clad thieves cowering from his gaze.

He flicked them up.

He opened his jaws.

Caught them in his mouth and gulped.

A/N: sorry if this chapter was crap, I've had authors block for a long time, and my parents have switched me to a school that starts at 6 in the morning, crazy, no? I'll get this re-done when I have the time, and also, in case you haven't noticed if you want to submit an OC you are more than welcome to use the form on my profile.

Hope my next chapter turns out better than this one!


	9. The Mystery Pokemon

A/N: this chapter isn't one of my longest, but I hope you nevertheless enjoy reading it.

June, Aretha and the girl froze, staring at Obsie in surprise, June blinked and tried to look at his mouth and Obsie, seeing all the attention he was getting, thumped his tail on the ground proudly and growled out his name.

The girl, who was still in the bubble, showed the teeniest hint of a smile. "...Did your onix just eat those thieves? Just like that?"

"It seems..." said Aretha examining Obsie.

"Won't it hurt him? I mean, who knows if they have other weapons?" said June nervously. "And they still have our Pokémon and our eggs"

"Okay, Obsie, spit them out" said Aretha firmly.

"On-ix" said Obsie, turning away from Aretha stubbornly.

"Obsie, spit them OUT" said Aretha, even more firmly, Obsie growled but took a deep breath and sort-of coughed the two thieves out reluctantly. They landed with a dry thump in the grass, completely caked in stone dust and small chips of stone, as soon as they saw June, Aretha and the girl glaring at them they squeaked and inched back, but only to bump their heads on Obsie's jaw, sending them scuttling back.

"P-please don't h-h-hurt us! We were sent here by our leader!" whimpered the male, practically sobbing.

"Yeah! We're just... pawns! We oblige orders!" whined the female, inching away from the onix behind her.

"We won't hurt you... unless you release our friend" June motioned over to the girl. "And return our Pokémon and our eggs"

"Yeah, where have you hid them, scum!" screeched the girl, still trapped in her bubble. The two thieves muttered wistfully and took out four octagon-shaped boxes and gave them to June, June examined them closely, they had a small silver button on the top and the words: Pokémon snatcher 4000 on the top. Acting almost instinctively, June jabbed her finger on one of the boxes.

The box gave a horrible clattering sound and, with a mechanical whir, eight metal legs poked out of the sides and curled upwards, making it look like a huge dead metal spider. On the sides of the legs, a few blades curled out and bent so they were covering the gaps, making it look like a cannon and, from the top, a bubble began blowing itself out the top and, at last, the bubble sprung free, with Aretha's egg inside.

"My egg!" yelled Aretha, and dived for the egg. She caught it and sank her nails in the bubble's skin, trying to pop it, but the bubble remained solid, as if it was made of rubber, meanwhile, June had already released the other bubbles, her egg, Ukko and the girl's cubone.

"Siree!" screamed the girl. "Did these jerks hurt you? Are you okay?" the girl tried to claw her way out of the bubble, but the bubble refused to pop.

"Cu! Bo!" yelled Siree, beating the bubble's skin with her bone club, but nothing happened.

"Shiii! SHI SHI SHEE!" yelled Ukko, sinking his claws in the bubble and attempting to rip it apart to no avail.

June picked the bubble with the egg and Ukko and glared at the two thieves. "You! Release our Pokémon, eggs and our friend from this bubble NOW!" the two thieves looked at each other and, to June's amazement, smiled.

"Ha! You think we'll tell you that?" said the man.

"You must be crazy if you think we're going to tell you that!" said the woman with a sneer.

"Fine, then I'll tell my Obsie to..." began Aretha, an odd grin drawing up on her face.

"W-well, if that thing eats us, you won't EVER know how to get them out!" said the woman.

"I... that's true" said June, she looked over to Aretha questioningly but, to her surprise, her grinned widened.

"Oh, I'm not going to tell Obsie to eat you..." she purred, her smile beginning to look disturbing. She then pointed her finger at the thieves and whistled.

Obsie didn't need any other signal, as soon as Aretha's lips curled Obsie roared and lunged for the thieves, grabbing them by their coats. They screamed and flailed around but Obsie laughed and began to shake them like a puppy shakes a ragdoll, violently swinging his head from side to side.

"AAH! MAKE IT STOOOP!" screamed the woman. "WE'LL TELL YOU! STOOOP!" Aretha snickered quietly and raised her palm, halting Obsie, who stopped and leant forward so that the thieves' feet were just grazing the ground, they slumped forwards, almost as if they had fainted.

"Right, how do I get my friends out of the bubbles" hissed Aretha. The male squeaked and weakly withdrew what looked like a chunky black pencil with a glowing tip. Aretha said no more and snatched it off him. She looked at the bubble with her egg and jabbed the glowing point on it. The bubble popped as if it was a simple soap bubble, catching her egg, she hurled the pencil towards June, who caught it and freed Ukko, Siree and the girl.

"Ukko! Are you ok bud?" said June, burying her face in his azure fur.

"Siree... I'm so glad to see you..." said the girl cuddling her cubone, she let the little lonely Pokémon clamber onto her shoulder and turned to glare at the thieves, who Obsie was still holding by the scruffs of their coats. She growled and began to run towards them, her fists held high, but before she could get at them, the thieves sighed and dropped out of their coats, completely knocked out.

June frowned, looking at the odd clothes they were wearing, were they... spaceman suits? Then it suddenly hit her. They were like those other people who had wanted to steal her Pokémon when she had gotten Moon! They even had the same mushroom hair style.

"Hey... I've seen these people before!" said June. "Well... not _these _people, but others like them"

Aretha snorted. "Ah, so you've already met team galactic, huh?"

"Yeah, that what they said they were called..." said June, daydreaming.

Aretha nodded and recalled her onix. "Well, we'd better leave; their other friends will probably come looking for them and we don't want any trouble" with that said Aretha chucked her Poké balls inside her bag and, holding her egg carefully, began to walk out of the field.

June smiled and ran up to her "Hey, any ideas about where we're going?"

Aretha nodded "Of course! I was thinking about going through cycling road-"

"Excuse me" rang out a familiar voice. June and Aretha turned around in unison to face the girl with the cubone, who gave them a tiny smile.

"Yeah? What's up?" said June.

The girl cleared her throat "Um... I... thanks, I don't think I could have gotten Siree without your help..."

"No problem! Anyone else could have done that" said Aretha.

The girl nodded "I must leave now, but I hope I get to meet you again. My name's Eva, by the way" Eva turned and walked swiftly out of the field.

"My name's June and this is Aretha!" June cried out after Eva, they both watched as Eva took up speed and finally left their view. "Uh... you were saying something about a cycling road?"

"Oh right! Yes, I thought we might go to Eterna city and challenge Gardenia" said Aretha.

"But I don't have a bike now, and you can only get across cycling road with a bike, can't you?" said June.

Aretha grinned "That's the fun part, you see, I thought we might go under it, and get to Eterna by foot, there's a bunch of rare Pokémon there and I thought it'd be cool to go camping"

"We're going to need some supplies though" said June. "Sleeping bags, food, matches, clean water..."

With that said, June and Aretha set off to find a travel shop, and thankfully, they found one near the area they were in. They quickly stocked up on food, Pokémon food, repels, Poké balls, matches, water bottles and two warm sleeping bags, Aretha's navy, June's bright red. They came out of the shop, and began to travel towards the road.

_A few hours later..._

"Arethaaaa, we've been walking for houuuurs, I thought this was supposed to be fun..." moaned June. "My feet are killing me..."

"Fine, we'll stop to rest for a bit. But I don't see why you're complaining, Ukko doesn't seem to be tired at all" said Aretha, watching Ukko energetically trod on.

"He's wild, he's used to it" said June absentmindedly, plopping herself down on a fallen log.

"What? You mean he hasn't got a Poké ball?" said Aretha concernedly. "Isn't it a little dangerous?"

"Well, he didn't want one, and I'm not going to force him into one anytime" said June, closing her eyes and soaking up the brisk sunlight.

"But what if he goes aggressive around you? Wild Pokémon still are infected by the sandgem disease, y'know" insisted Aretha.

"Mmm... maybe, but I trust him" said June with a yawn. "Wow, I'm tired..."

"I know what will wake you up" said Aretha happily. "How about we go swimming on that spring over there? Looks pretty clean" she pointed over to a big spring a little way off.

June opened her eyes momentarily and shook her head. "Nah, I think I'll pass... Ukko, would you like to go swimming? Actually..." June stood up and handed Aretha her Poké balls. "I think everyone could do with a little swimming, except maybe Moon" she picked up a can of repel. "I think I'll take a nap, meet you in the spring"

Aretha nodded, and smiled at Ukko. "How about it? Fancy swimming? But promise not to shock anybody while they're in the spring, okay?" Ukko nodded and both of them began making for the spring, hearing a faint hiss come from June as she was spraying more repel on herself, after a few minutes of walking Aretha and Ukko got to the spring.

"Okay then, come on o- Ukko!" yelled Aretha as Ukko didn't wait for her and jumped in the pool; he resurfaced and gave Aretha a cheeky wave. "Aah, well, I'm not your trainer to tell you what to do, huh?" Ukko stuck his tongue out at her and smiled, diving under the clear water. Aretha laughed and released both her and June's Pokémon. "Right, you guys have fun while I go off to change, kay?" she picked up a bundle of clothes from her bag and disappeared in a thick group of trees.

"_Wowee... this place is soo pretty!_" squeaked Dancer, looking at the glittering spring.

"_WATEEEER!_" screamed Lazuli, before jumping into the spring gleefully.

"_Ugh...I hate water, typical for out loser trainer to bring us here_" meowed Moon, before avoiding neatly a huge wave of water courtesy of Lazuli. Meanwhile, Storm had grinned at the water and "dived" on it without creating the tiniest ripple and Obsie frowned at the water and slithered away from it. Dancer was trying out the water and, to her immense surprise and delight; she found that she could float perfectly in the water, her face peeping out comically from the waves.

"_Aww, come on Moon! Stop being such a... a... a sourpuss!_"Yelled Dancer, giggling at her own pun. Moon gave her a long stare before walking away, muttering darkly to herself.

"_Ah, leave her_" gasped Ukko, resurfacing beside Dancer "_she's probably still sour because I totally kicked her butt that other time_"

Moon stopped right in her tracks. "_Listen you electrified ball of blue fur, that was a complete fluke-_"

"_Oh yeah? Want a rematch then?_" yelled Ukko "_Come and get me then!_" he blew a raspberry at Moon, which caused her face to turn bright red.

"_I'll shut you up_" she growled, letting out a huge roar (That was pretty loud considering Moon was a glameow) she charged towards Ukko, but the instant her front feet touched the cold water she flinched, skidded and fell flat on her back unceremoniously on top of the watery sand. She skittered to her feet and ran away as far away from the water as possible, giving Ukko a humiliated glare.

"_Wow Ukko, you're really cheerful today_" said Dancer, waddling her stubby legs in an attempt to swim.

"_Oh, it's because I love water_" said Ukko, swimming in circles around Dancer. "_It's been so long since I went swimming... my fur was all itchy yesterday_"

"_Hmm... where's Lazuli? She's been underwater for quite some time now, hasn't she?_" said Dancer worriedly.

"_Don't worry, she's built for holding her breath underwat- look! There she is!_" Ukko pointed at the prinplup, who had jumped out of the water and dived on it. She stopped and swam incredibly fast towards them.

"_Hey guys! Having fun? I sure am!_" she said happily. "_These new fins are soooo cool! I love evolution; I'm going to keep evolving no matter what!_"

"Ok, I'm ready!" rang out a familiar voice. The Pokémon turned around to see Aretha dressed in a navy swimming suit with wavy aqua stripes in the middle. Grinning, she began to run and dived neatly in the water. "Gah, co-old!" she flailed around the cold water but her body soon got used to the chilly temperature. She swam happily alongside Ukko and even pushed Dancer along too.

"Say Ukko..." said Aretha, swimming alongside him "seen Moon around?"

"Shiin, shininx" said Ukko, pointing towards the sulking catty Pokémon.

"Buud bud" said Dancer, sort-of nodding her head.

"Yeah... I agree..." said Aretha, wishing for the umpteenth time she could understand Pokémon. "June was right, she doesn't like water..."

"Did somebody say my name?" trilled a voice. Aretha turned around to see June, fully dressed in an azumarill theme swimming dress, her hair tied up in a wonky ponytail. She gave them a grin, stepped back a little and cannonballed into the water. "Holy crap!" she gasped, rising to the surface. "It's so co-old!"

"You'll get used to it, don't worry" said Aretha, swimming closer to her friend. "Anyway, weren't you going to take a nap?"

"Er... I was, but I felt kinda bored afterwards" said June.

"You can't feel bored if you're asleep" pointed out Aretha.

"True, true. But..." June froze, her face paling suddenly, she looked down at her feet.

"What's wrong?" Said Aretha, examining June.

June gulped and, before anyone could stop her, began screaming like a maniac, flailing her arms around and sending water into Aretha's eyes. "AAH! SOMETHING'S GOT ME! SOMETHING'S GOT MEEE!"

"Wait, a Pokémon?" said Aretha, shielding her eyes from the massive splashing. "WAIT! No, Ukko. No shocking, you'll just shock June as well" she said quickly as she saw sparks rising out of Ukko's crest. "Lazuli! Come here!" Her prinplup quickly sped towards her as soon as her name was pronounced. Aretha reached out and hooked her arm around Lazuli's neck and clung forcefully to June's arm. "Ok Lazuli, head for the shore quickly!"

"Priiiin!" shrieked Lazuli obediently. She ducked herself under the water and began swimming energetically towards the shore, but they wouldn't budge. Puffing her feathers up determinedly, she swam as fast as her wings and legs would get her, but they only moved an inch, whatever was holding June's leg seemed to be pretty strong.

"Wait, I got an idea..." said Aretha, she glanced over to her sleeping onix. "Obsie, could you pick us up, please?" Obsie growled as he awoke and stared at his trainer and her friend. Making sure not to touch the water, Obsie craned his head over the surface of the water and picked his trainer up by her swimming dress. As both trainers were lifted out of the water, they could finally see what had been clinging on to June's leg...

"STORM!" screeched Aretha furiously, looking as the gas Pokémon detached himself from June's ankle sheepishly. "That prank just went TOO far!"

"Y-yeah... too far" said June weakly, her face still ashen from the shock.

Aretha growled and wriggled out of Obsie's grip, making both trainers fall in the water with a crash. Aretha swam quickly to the shore and picked storms Poké ball up and recalled him angrily, she then turned towards June. "I-I'm really sorry about that"

"Its okay" reassured June. "But I think I'll get out of the water now" June swam towards the shore and clambered on it, she picked a towel that matched her swimming outfit and cloaked herself in it. "We should start collecting sticks for the campfire, but let's let the Pokémon swim around in the water for a little longer"

_A few hours later..._

It had gotten quite dark soon, as well as cold. June was huddled around both of her two coats, her old green one and her new rainbow one, crouching a little too far away from the fire, she didn't like fire in general, she thought it was dangerous and she hated it when she got tiny burns on her fingers and was scared that she might fall in the campfire. Ukko was cuddling up to her, and she was holding her egg, which she noticed, was unusually warm. A rich, savoury smell reached her nostrils as Aretha heated soup in the fire.

"It's nearly done!" said Aretha, stirring the soup around. "Say, you are Ukko are pretty quiet tonight, I hope you're still not angry about the Storm incident"

June blinked in surprise "Oh no, of course not! It's just... I'm thinking..."

"About what?" asked Aretha, pouring soup in two bowls.

"Um... I don't know..." admitted June.

Aretha shook her head and thrust one of the bowls towards June. "Here, this should warm you up" June took the bowl gratefully and drank the soup slowly and quietly.

After drinking the warm soup, June made two mugs of chocolate with little pink and white marshmallows shaped like Poké balls. As she was halfway through drinking it an odd ringing sound began to come from her bag, she rummaged through it and pulled out her sinnoh dex and jabbed the 'answer video call' icon. The small square in the screen expanded to show her mother's face.

"Hello honey!" said her mother smiling at her daughter. "How is your journey going?"

"Fine mum" said June happily.

"Aww, that shinx you got there is so cute!" cooed June's mother. "Anyway, how are you honey?"

"Fine mum, just a little cold" said June.

"Ooh! And who's your friend there?" said June's mother.

"That's Aretha, we're travelling together" said June, tilting the sinnoh dex so her mother could see Aretha better. Aretha gave the screen a shy wave.

"Good good, anyway, did you say you were cold?" said June's mother. "I have a great recipe for a nice berry juice blend you can make in the wild if you get too cold" her mother wrote down something on the keyboard below the camera and a picture of two red berries popped out of the screen, one that resembled a small red bell pepper and another a spiky tomato. "Okay, you girls must get these two berries, two of each for a single serving. Just squish them up and mix them with juice, ok?"

"Ok" said June. "What are they called?"

"Chople and tamato" said her mother. "I have to go now, I wanted to check that you were ok"

"I am" said June happily. "Bye mom" her mother gave her one last smile and disappeared from the screen, putting her sinnoh dex back in her bag, she turned to Aretha. "Can we go look for the berries? Maybe we could put some in the hot chocolate!" Aretha nodded, and began taking out a small torch to light their way.

Finding berries, as opposed to June's initial belief, was a pretty difficult thing. And so far they had gotten only two chople berries and one tamato. The berry bushes they grew on were small and very rare.

"Smell any Ukko?" asked June as she searched another bush. Ukko took a deep breath to see if he could smell any of the spicy berries but he couldn't.

"Wait, I think I found some!... oh no... cheri again" muttered Aretha.

"Agh, this is hard" groaned June as she threw another branch filled with red poisonous berries. "Keep smelling Ukko" Ukko nodded and pointed his nose towards the wind, thinking that the wind might help carry the scent. Just as he was about to give up he noticed a tiny trickle of smell, coming from both berries. he alerted June and ran off in pursuit of the smell.

"Wait!" gasped June, running far behind Ukko. Aretha managed to catch up to him just as he was beginning to slow down. Ukko put down his nose on the ground, where had the smell gone? He took a deep sniff and began looking in the middle of a bush and found to his surprise a whole pile of berries! sniffing happily, he began to eat some bluk berries, since they weren't needed.

"Wow! Ukko's found a whole pile! How clever!" said June happily. She bent over and picked three tamato berries and two chople just as Ukko was helping himself to a pecha berry. After putting the remaining berries in the bag, June and Aretha began making for the camp, guided by the softly glowing fire.

Ukko was feeling fine. He walked happily by his trainer's side as she complimented him on his smelling techniques. Grinning, he withdrew another pecha berry he had impaled on his pointed tail and began munching on it.

Then Ukko picked up on the smell of another Pokémon. He didn't worry too much, since he could easily fight the Pokémon, but as they walked onwards Ukko noticed the smell getting stronger, so strong that he could even smell the Pokémon's type. Not that he knew what those types were; he had never smelled another Pokémon with those types. One smelled like deep, strong magic, smelling a little bitterer than psychic and a rough, dry scent, rock maybe? Ukko couldn't tell, but soon they reached the cam and Ukko quickly forgot about the odd smelling Pokémon.

"Finally! Ok" June picked up a good-sized bowl and tipped all the berries in it, and began to squish them with gusto. She mixed in some water and a little bit of sugar and poured the spicy mixture in two cups.

"Mmm... it's warm" said Aretha, taking one of the cups. She put it to her lips and took a big sip. Her eyes watered and she shut her eyes, but then the effect died down quickly. "Haah, hey... I feel warm inside!" said Aretha, taking another sip.

"Wait, I wanna try some!" June picked up her cup and almost downed the whole thing down, but she soon regretted that. The most horrible spicy sensation began blazing in her tongue and throat, even worse than the time she had mistook a jar filled with extra hot spicy sauce for her strawberry slush puppy. She coughed, but the air passing through her windpipe made the sensation worse so she cringed and tried not to breathe. But thankfully, the sensation quickly faded down and she was left with a nice, cosy warmth in her stomach.

"That was great! Well, after all the spicy burns down" said Aretha, sipping the last of her smoothie. June nodded and offered what was left to Ukko, who denied it almost immediately. June shrugged and tipped it on the ground. Ukko sighed thankfully.

As he did, he noticed something very eerie, the odd Pokémon smell he had smelt before was closer that it had ever been, and the creature was getting closer.

June frowned as Ukko suddenly sprang up from where he was sitting and began growling at a patch of grass, already his fur beginning to fizz with tiny zapping bolts of electricity. June motioned to Aretha and she nodded, releasing her prinplup silently to aid Ukko in battle. They all stood back to be ready for the mystery Pokémon.

Instead of a Pokémon, a huge purple and yellow beam of energy shot out from the patch of grass, scorching it. June and Ukko managed to dodge the first dragon rage but a second one shot out, almost hitting Lazuli in the process. Lazuli squawked in surprise and let out a narrow bubblebeam unintentionally, which put out the fire, leaving them with only the moon and Ukko's sparking coat as a light source.

A creature leapt from the grass and growled a horrible raspy snarl at Ukko. Ukko lunged forward and attempted to bite down on the creature, but it batted Ukko away with what June supposed was its tail, and before June could dodge, the thing growled and jumped on top on top of June, latching onto her shoulder.

June screamed and tried to shake the angry Pokémon off. She managed to catch a glimpse of its face, two small eyes, blazing with malice and a huge disproportioned mouth, with rows of razor sharp teeth. Ukko tried an electric attack but to his dismay it just bounced off from its hide. The Pokémon snarled and sank his fangs into June's shoulder, making her scream much louder and flail around more. Finally Lazuli sent a well aimed bubblebeam towards the creature, who screeched in pain as the bubbles impacted on its coat. He released June and scuttled away, picking up something in its mouth.

"Oh god. June, your shoulder!" said Aretha, examining June's shoulder which was bleeding.

June bit her lip and winced. "I-it hurts..." she whimpered, tears spiking her eyes. Aretha quickly searched a bag of supplies and found a type of potion made especially for humans. She sprayed it on June's wound and bandaged it carefully.

"Don't worry" said Aretha, tying the bandage. "This special potion makes scratches heal really quickly, in a few hours you'll be good as new"

"Thanks" said June, smiling. That was true; already the pain was leaving her quite fast. "At least that monster won't bother us again..."

"Oh no" said Aretha. "Our bags, they're gone! No!" Aretha groaned. "that thing must have stolen them..."

"Oh crap, our food supplies were in them!" said June with alarm. "How are we supposed to survive without food?"

"And our dexes, maps, spare Poké balls, Pokémon food, change of clothes, pyjamas... no, I have to follow that thing and get our bags back"

"NO!" said June quickly.

Aretha sighed "June, if I don't get our stuff back we won't be able to continue, we'll get stranded"

"Then I'll come with you" said June defiantly, but Aretha shook her head.

"You have to stay still for the potion to work properly, besides, I have the upper hand" said Aretha with a smile. "That thing is weak to water type moves, and I have Lazuli on my side" she motioned to her prinplup, who nodded.

"I... fine, but take my Pokémon to help defeat it" said June, offering her Poké balls to Aretha. Aretha nodded and took the Poké balls. Ukko immediately stepped forward but Aretha shook her head.

"Ukko, you must stay here and look after June, ok?" Ukko nodded reluctantly. Aretha picked up the flashlight. "Good thing it didn't take the flashlight, eh?"

"Yeah... oh, please be careful" said June concernedly.

Aretha grinned. "Don't worry, I'll just knock it out and grab our stuff before it gets back up" Aretha nodded goodbye to June and began to make her way through the grass, following the trail of scorched grass.

June scratched Ukko's scruff of fur "I just hope she's okay" they both watched as Aretha wandered out of their field of view, her torch being the only thing that June could see of her.

A/N: no comments here today lol.


	10. Biting Off More Than You Can Nibble

A/N: yay, my 20th review! I'm happy thank you, EveChan170!, I won't put your OC in this chapter, but I promise she will be on the next. Anyway, this is more of a filler chapter, sorry about the delay (stupid school...) anyway, on with the story!

June sat a little uncomfortably on the ground, watching the beam from Aretha's flashlight get farther and farther away. The pain on her shoulder had almost completely faded away, which was great, she thought. She cast a glance over to Ukko who was seated down, looking in the same direction she had been looking, with a small frown on his face. "Hey Ukko" Ukko jumped in surprise, as if June had interrupted his thoughts.

"Shhiinx?" he said, his eyes briefly scanning June's face before returning to the path he had been staring at.

"I was just a little worried about Aretha" she said with a small smile. "But like she said, she'll only beat it down with water... right?" Ukko didn't reply, but the frown on his forehead increased. June sighed. "I hope she's okay..."

_Meanwhile..._

"Hmm... smell anything, Lazuli?"asked Aretha, as she parted a particularly long piece of foliage out of her way, the burning track had stopped and they were relying on Lazuli's sense of smell.

"Priiin" said Lazuli, sniffing the area thoroughly, but then she drooped disappointedly, she couldn't smell the faintest trace of the mysterious Pokémon.

"It's okay, I mean, prinplups don't have the best sense of smell there is, huh?" said Aretha, smiling encouragingly at her Pokémon, Lazuli perked up determinedly and began to try and smell for the Pokémon. She sniffed at a patch of grass and suddenly picked up a delicious, dry smelling scent. Lazuli licked her lips absent-mindedly and followed the smell to a thick bush. Grinning in anticipation; she parted the leaves as silently as she could and peered inside.

Inside the bush a small, round figure was crouched down in the dust, the only thing that Lazuli could make out of it was a large fin jutting from the top of the Pokémon, it picked up something that ruffled like a plastic bag and began ripping the plastic off like a spoiled child might unwrap a present. It hungrily picked up a round thing from it and stuck it in its mouth.

"What's up, Lazuli, found something?" said Aretha behind her, shining her torch on the Pokémon. Lazuli stopped her and put a flipper up to her mouth to tell her they should be _very _quiet. "Hey, a gible!" whispered Aretha excitedly. The gible didn't seem to notice the light filling her hiding spot, preferring to stuff another blue-cookie thing in her mouth.

"Priiin...pluuuh" whined Lazuli quietly as she watched the gible devour the whole bag.

"Well... I can always make you more poffins, don't worry about that" whispered Aretha. The gible suddenly jumped and Aretha thought for a second that she would turn around and rip her face off, but she just spat out the chewed up poffins in a very unappetizable blue mush.

"Uurgh... I don't think she's too into dry poffins... oh no" the gible raised a paw and slashed down on June's bag who had lain hidden in the shadows, leaving a huge gash. The gible hungrily stuck her hand inside the gash and pulled out June's special extra filled nutella sandwiches, stuffing them into her mouth without even taking the aluminium foil off them. "June's not going to be happy about that..."

The gible then reached deeper into the bag and found June's sinnoh dex, which miraculously wasn't making any random Pokémon identification. The gible sniffed it to see if it was edible but then she stopped and stared at the screen. Aretha frowned; there wasn't anything on the screen, so why was the gible so intently staring at the screen? Then she realised, the sinnoh dex was turned off and it reflected a little like a mirror and it was reflecting _them._

The gible hissed and threw the sinnoh dex on the ground, jumping around to face her intruders with her raspy growl ringing ominously. She leaped into the air and attempted to dig her teeth into Aretha's face but Lazuli reacted just in time and beat the land shark Pokémon to the ground. The gible shook a little as it recovered from the hit and jumped again, this time aiming for Aretha's shoulder but lazuli hit her squarely, sending her skidding to the ground, three times she lunged, aiming for Aretha's head, her leg and finally her other shoulder, and every time Lazuli beat her down with a well aimed bubble beam. The gible tried to stand up again but her short legs buckled, her eyes glazed over and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

"Wow... that was scary" said Aretha, crouching over the fainted gible.

"Plup pluup" said Lazuli, picking up the items lining the ground, she picked up June and Aretha's bags and quickly began to make her way out of the field, but stopped when she saw that her trainer wasn't following. "Priup?"

Aretha stared at the gible for a while. "Uh... I don't think we should leave her out here... just like that" she then turned towards the prinplup. "Hey Lazuli, I'm catching her, what do you think?"

Lazuli's face changed from wonder to pure horror. "PLUUP? PLUPLUPLU!" she yelled, waving her flippers angrily.

"Aw, come on. Gibles are _really _rare and strong!" groaned Aretha, Lazuli just shook her head stubbornly and slumped down on the floor. "Fine, but I'm still catching her" Aretha looked through her bag and found a Poké ball. Grinning, she sent the familiar red beam which engulfed her momentarily, but the beam, instead of sucking her in, broke and returned to the Poké ball. "... Seems like she already has an owner" said Aretha, not bothering to hide the disappointment in her voice.

"Pluu, prin" said Lazuli victoriously, but Aretha gave her a smile.

"Aha! Since she's a trainer Pokémon, we OUGHT to bring her to the Pokémon centre and try and find her owner! And if we can't... guess I'll just have to keep her!" and, with a smirk on her face. Aretha released her onix. Obsie growled in surprise when he saw the fainted gible, but pressed his nose toward Aretha. "Obsie, to you mind carrying this gible in your mouth?"

"Oooonrrr" growled onix in response and scooped up the motionless gible in his mouth.

"Good! Now, don't bash her around too much okay?" Aretha said as she climbed atop the onix's head, she patted his head as Lazuli clambered up with a defeated look on her face, she sighed and slumped down on a flat piece of rock on Obsie's head, crossing her fins like a spoiled child. Aretha ignored her and sent a sharp command to Obsie and soon, they were speeding smoothly back to camp.

_Later..._

Obsie had no problem in skimming the crusty, dry ground and soon they had arrived at the campfire, Aretha thanked Obsie and motioned for him to stay motionless, then, gathering all the stolen supplies, she walked on to find June and Ukko crouched down, too absorbed in staring at a wonky grid with paw prints and hand-drawn crosses in the dirt to notice Aretha.

"Right, Ukko. See, the objective of the game is to match three in a row" said June, drawing another cross and running a thin line horizontally through three crosses. "Like this!" Ukko tilted his head and drew a zig-zaggy line through two paw prints and a cross. "No, see, you are playing paw prints, and you should match 3 paw prints in a _straight _line, okay?" said June.

"Hey, you lot" said Aretha appearing beside them.

June looked up and clapped her hands in delight. "Aretha, you're back! And pretty much in one piece, also..." she giggled nervously and then motioned to the grid. "I've been trying to teach Ukko to play noughts and crosses... er, paw prints and crosses, and he's improving!"

"Mmhmm" said Aretha, sitting down and laying the supplies on the ground.

June sighed happily as she caught sight of the crumpled up heap of gear. But her smile disappeared when she saw the huge gash across the side of her white bag. "Aretha...? What happened to my bag" June motioned to rip on the side.

"U-uh, well, you see... let's just say that gible was... kinda feisty" said Aretha, turning around to check that Obsie was still standing in the place she had left him, which he was. "But don't worry, I've heard of a good shop in Eterna that sells really nice looking patches..."

June sniffed. "Well... at least that evil monster won't bother us again"

Aretha gulped "Er... well, when I battled her, I made some...discoveries...?"

"What discoveries?" said June firmly, starting to not like the conversation.

"Well, the gible was a trainer Pokémon" said Aretha.

"Aaaand?"

"Well, since it was a trainer Pokémon I thought I might... return her to her owner" said Aretha, watching with slight amusement as June's face turned beetroot red.

"WHAT? You mean... THAT THING'S GONNA BE WITH US?"

"Calm down June!" said Aretha, trying to put her arms on June's shoulders, but when she did, Ukko began growling at her. "It's not such a big d-"

"OF COURSE ITS A BIG DEAL" roared June. "That thing almost bit my shoulder off!"

"Don't exaggerate, besides I can't really let a domesticated Pokémon starve"

"Domesticated? If you think that thing is domesticated you must be stark bonkers" said June, crossing her arms. "And where is it now anyway?"

Aretha sighed. "Okay Obsie, spit her out" Obsie, who had remained a quiet as a statue, slithered in. He looked at June, his eyebrows wobbling at her angry expression and spat out a very dusty gible, looking very pleased with himself.

The gible rolled out onto the dusty road, looking only half conscious. Although she hadn't done anything scarier than blinking around in a mid-daze, June screamed and Ukko lunged for the gible, sharp pointed teeth digging into her fin. She squealed and tried to shake the growling shinx off, looking a thousand times less menacing. It squealed pitifully and tried to scratch Ukko away, but he seemed so intent on trying to rip a chunk of her fin that he ignored her feeble claws.

"Hey, stop Ukko! He's tearing up that poor little dragon!" said Aretha

"Serves her right" said June moodily. "For ripping open my shoulder"

"Stop exaggerating, and besides, it's not her fault, she probably hasn't been recalled for such a long time that Sandgem sickness must have gotten to her" said Aretha. "Just like when Ukko goes aggressive, see? And I have an odd feeling that we might have robbed her of her berry stash, so stop Ukko. Now"

June puffed out her cheeks "Fiiine, but that thing so much as drools over me and I'll call my entire party out on her" then, with a swift hand motion, stopped Ukko. He glared at the gible, who was in a pitiful state, all roughed up as well as whimpering. And sat by June, determined to glare the gible down as much as he could. June sighed and rifled through the pile of supplies. "All this made me really hungry, I think I'll have one of my nutella sandwiches now..."

"Uh... you can't" said Aretha.

"Why not?"

"The gible ate them..."

"WHAT?"

A/N: don't mess with June's nutella sandwiches, ever. *shivers* anyway, please review! It'd be lovely to get some good advice on how I can improve. I don't mind constructive criticism, but please, no flames.


	11. The Honeysweet Victory

A/N: I really should have given this person a mention before, thank you, alternate lopunnu for commenting on every chapter ;) your reviews always make my day.

Another quick note, I will use your OCs repeatedly even if they already were in a scene, so keep your eyes peeled!

Needless to say, the journey towards Eterna from that night on was less than pleasant for Aretha. June, after finally realizing that not only would that gible travel with them until they found her long lost trainer, she would have to stand her 24/7 since the gible didn't have a Poké ball. So she decided to make Aretha´s life as difficult as possible until they got to Eterna.

"Arethaaaaa" whined June for what seemed the thirtieth time. "It´s not faaaair, how come you get to have four Pokémon when I only have three? Well… more like two, Moon never obeys me or does anything a trainer Pokémon should"

Aretha sighed exasperatedly and tucked a piece of stray black and blue hair behind her ear "First of all, she's not mine, she's her trainers and I'm just helping her get back to him or her, and second, that is of no concern of mine"

"But its not faaaair" whined June. "She would still count as yours for the time being, and you're only supposed to have six Pokémon in your party"

"Not true" said Aretha. "You carry as many Pokémon as you can-"

"Which is six" said June, crossing her arms.

"No! You're allowed to take as many Pokémon as you want; you just have to bring the normal amount of Pokémon to Pokéathlons, Pokémon contests and gym battles"

"Since when?"

"Since SS began, and even before that it's not like anyone followed the rule" said Aretha, crossing her arms this time.

"Hmm… well, you still have loads of Pokémon" said June decidedly.

Aretha puffed out her cheeks. "Well, if it bothers you so much why don't you catch a ponyta or something? They live around here"

"I don't like fire types" said June.

"That's not my problem!" said Aretha, beginning to get really annoyed. "You're acting like a spoiled brat, and its bad enough having Ukko bully that poor gible around so much"

"He's not bullying her" said June slowly. "He is stopping her from ripping my shoulder open again"

"There you go again with the whole 'ooh I'm so scared cause a gible nearly bit me to death' thing" said Aretha, viciously kicking a pebble from her path. "She's not doing anything, yet he keeps glaring at her like she was…"

"A monster?" finished June. "I'd say he has all the right in the world to keep her from crossing the line"

"What line?" said Aretha, checking the Sinnoh dex's glowing screen, which showed the winding path they were on "You of all people should know the effects of SS well, and be quiet, I'm trying to read this map, Aww crap, I think it led us on a wrong path" she tapped the screen and sighed.

"Well, I…" began June, but after a sharp glare from Aretha she focused on the path before her; watching Ukko and the gible walk a little further from them.

Ukko was walking steadily, a look of fierce determination crossing his face. His eyes were red and puffy, looking as if he had been crying, but it was really because June had insisted on putting two extra coats of wild Pokémon repellent to avoid a rampaging ponyta from crashing into them and, Ukko though, that was enough repellent to halt a whole stampede of them, he sneezed and wiped his nose with his paw. Beside him, the gible was walking without a problem; she stopped to examine his eyes curiously.

"_Are you crying_?" she said.

Ukko sniffed "_No, it's all this repellent_"

The gible's eyes widened. "_Wow! So I was right the first time!"_

"_What do you mean, dragon_?" growled Ukko.

"_I'm not dragon, I'm a gible_" said the gible, puffing herself out, but when she saw Ukko's glare she seemed to shrink and decided to talk to the ground. "_I-I meant... I was right about you not being a trainer Pokémon..."_

"_Oh, you think_?" said Ukko acidly, pointing to his eyes. He sneezed in disgust and picked up his pace, leaving the gible alone on the path. She squeaked, terrified that a wild Pokémon might jump out at her and bite her to shreds. She quickly ran to Ukko's side. She didn't like him, but at least he could help fend wild Pokémon away.

"_Um…"_ she muttered, picking at a loose scale on her hand. "_Why do you like her so much_?"

"_Who?"_ Ukko snapped, annoyed that the gible had caught up with him.

"_Your… trainer_" she said, glancing sideways at Ukko.

"'_cause she's my trainer_" replied Ukko, then his face took on a completely different expression. "_Say, what happened to your trainer?_"

A look of hatred crossed the gible's face. "Oh, _nothing happened to him… he-_"

"AIIIIEEEE!"

"_June!" _yelled Ukko, then he turned towards the gible. "_What did you do to her?_"

"_Nothing!" _said the gible, her voice reducing to a squeak. _"I'm too far away to bite her!"_

"_Don't toy with me" _said Ukko. _"You could have easily thrown a dragon rage attack from here" _his ears began fizzing with electricity. _"I'm warning you, if you have hurt her…"_

"Oow! Owowowowow!" whined June.

"Stop kicking it! It'll just bounce back and hit your leg" scolded Aretha. Ukko sniffed and began to run towards June, but it only took a few sprints for his eyes to burst out in tears, so he retreated, and decided to rely on his ears and teary eyes.

June was rubbing a bright pink patch on her leg beside a battered looking nettle. "Stupid nettle" she said.

"Rub it with a dock leaf, it'll soothe it" said Aretha, shaking her head at all the racket June was making.

"Good idea" she said, she stopped rubbing the sore spot and waved at Ukko. "Ukko! Mind helping me find a dock leaf?"

Ukko nodded, and motioned to the gible. _"Hey, gible. We need to find a dock leaf for June's nettle sting, okay?" _he flicked his tail at her and dived in a bush, a few rustles later and the gible was beside him.

"_Cool, I'm good at finding plants and things that smell" _said the gible, she raised her nose as high as she could and took a deep lungful of forest air. _"Hmm, I smell one! Its very faint, a little bit far away, but it's there" _she pointed at the path. _"It's straight on from here"_

"…_That's… impressive" _deadpanned Ukko, he nodded and her and sprinted forward, but slowed down enough for the gible to catch up.

_Meanwhile…_

June was having a harder time than Ukko finding a dock leaf; she stormed through the thick forest vegetation, cursing the Sinnoh dex for not having a dock plant finder.

"Darn it! There aren't any of those stupid plants anywhere" she grumbled, tapping the Sinnoh dex as if a magical dock plant would materialize in front of her.

"There has to be one around here" said Aretha, peeling a particularly sticky leaf from her hair. "Though I have to admit, this is getting really boring…"

"I know!" said June loudly, making Aretha flinch. "Dock plants are plants, right? And Dancer's kinda like a plant Pokémon, sooooo maybe she has some sort of plant radar!" and before Aretha could protest, June hurled Dancer's Poké ball in the air. Dancer materialized in front of her, giving a little twirl. "Okay Dancer, can you help me find a dock leaf with your plant radar?"

"Byuuuud! Bud!" she said happily. She didn't know what a plant radar was, but she knew what dock leaves were, so, giving a little pirouette, she set off to find one.

"Aha! See, I knew Dancer had a plant radar!" said June, clapping her hands together. Aretha shrugged and followed Dancer with her eyes.

"I've never heard of a 'plant radar'" she said, checking the map. "But okay, I guess if Dancer has it… and your map is going haywire again" she flipped the map towards June, which instead of showing the quiet grassy forest path they were on, showed an underground cave filled with magma and apparently, they had just walked into a gigantic magma whirlpool. "I think this is the inside of stark mountain and… oh, its Snowpoint now" the angry volcanic cave suddenly glazed over with impeccable white snow, with a stone temple near the bottom.

"Ah, leave it" said June. "We have a plant radar now!" she beamed proudly towards her budew, who was performing a wonky ballet routine. Dancer clapped her vines together and started again, but suddenly froze in the middle of a spin. She parted her vines quizzically and stared at the path with a curious expression on her face.

"Wow, what happened to Dancer?" said Aretha. "Why'd she stop?"

June shrugged then walked over to Dancer. "What's wrong Dancer? Did you detect something bad?" getting no response; June stroked the outside of one of her vines worriedly.

Dancer suddenly snapped her vines together and, letting out a high-pitched squeal, rushed forward without any warning.

"Whoa! Wait!" said June running after her. "Where are you go- OW!"

"What, did a nettle sting your other leg?" said Aretha.

"No… my clip got caught on a twig again" June quickly disentangled the clip and put it in her pocket. "Come on, I'm going to lose sight of Dancer soon" June and Aretha ran towards the bud Pokémon who was running and screeching as if her life depended on it. She stopped briefly to scan a wide berry bush in the way then jumped through it, disappearing from June's sight. June and Aretha leaped over the bush and found themselves in a small clearing, where two trainers and their Pokémon stood on either side, a roserade and a farfetch'd.

"Okay roserade" said a blonde girl with a white and blue dress. "Sludge bomb!" a swirling ball of purple goo began expanding on the roserade's hand and, with an elegant flick of her wrist, flung it at the farfetch'd.

A boy wearing a black long sleeve shirt, green shorts and a long red scarf that June recognized as Roxas from the Diamond Cutters Contest grinned and pointed at the sludge bomb. "Whirlwind Zumochi, but careful not to burst it!" Zumochi held his leek in his beak and began fanning air towards the sludge bomb with his wings; halting it in its path and making it hover a few feet above the ground. "Now, hold it there"

"Petal dance!" said the girl. Her roserade began spinning perfectly and spread her arms. Big pink petals began to spin with the roserade like giant confetti and the whole area was filled with a sweet rose smell. June peeled her eyes off the roserade and looked down to Dancer, who seemed frozen on the spot in admiration, her slit-like eyes fixed on the roserade who was dancing like a master ballerina. The roserade stopped and threw her arms forward making the petals fly forward and get caught in the whirlwind.

"Quick Zumochi, leafblade on the sludge bomb" Zumochi twirled the leek in his hand and sliced down on the sludge bomb, leaving a forest green trail of light. The sludge bomb exploded in a thousand purple sparkles and tiny pink petal slivers slowly fluttered down onto the arena.

"Whoo! That was awesome!" said June a little too loudly while Aretha shook her head at her friend embarrassing herself. "Wow, did you see that, Dancer? Wasn't it awesome? Wasn't it?"

"Thanks!" Said Roxas. "Hey, aren't you June from the Diamond Cutters? How've you been?"

"Fine" said June happily. "Seems like Dancer really liked your routine" she said as Dancer hopped around a very puzzled roserade. Then she turned towards the girl "And who are you? I don't remember seeing you at the Diamond Cutters"

"Um… I… wasn't in it" said the girl.

"Oh, what's your name?"

"She's Sakura" said Roxas quickly. "We're forming a tag team in the Springleaf contest in Eterna City"

"Springleaf Contest? …Oh cool, are you guys going to win eggs?"

"Um… no" said Roxas. "They won't give out eggs in this contest, we're just getting medals"

"Aww, well that stinks" said June.

"Hey, you guys still have your eggs, don't you? You know, the ones you won at the Diamond Cutters?"

"Oh yeah" June withdrew from her bag the two eggs. "Aretha said we didn't need to carry them around all the time, since my egg would probably keep both of them warm, besides, we wrapped them up in our coats and spare clothes"

"Oh! Um… May I… see your egg?" said Sakura, her eyes sparkling.

"Oh sure" said June, handing Sakura her red and brown egg.

Sakura stroked the egg shell carefully. "I think I know what Pokémon egg this is, I'm pretty sure this egg is a v-"

"Oh yeah, I've just remembered! Have you guys seen any dock bushes around?" said June. "I er… got a nettle sting on my leg"

"Um, there's one there" said Roxas pointing at the far end where an almost bare dock bush stood. June nodded at Roxas and hurried over to the bush. She plucked the biggest leaf she could find and waved it victoriously. But the wind snatched the leaf from her hands and flew it over her head as if taunting her, then carried it through the forest, nearly disappearing from June's sight.

"NO! that's mine!" screamed June, chasing after the leaf.

"June, get back here…" said Aretha, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Just pick another one" but her demand fell on deaf ears as June chased after the leaf. June ran further and further away from the clearing, quickly disappearing from their sight.

"Is she always like this?" said Roxas. Aretha considered the question for a while before answering.

"Not really, I think it's the extra layers of Pokémon repel messing up her brain or something of the like" said Aretha. Roxas nodded as if he understood, while Sakura smiled briefly. "Hm… if you guys don't mind too much, could you please come with me to chase June down? There's safety in numbers… it's ok if you prefer to stay, of course"

"Well… what do you think, Sakura?" said Roxas looking towards Sakura, who nodded. "Ok, we'll go with you" Aretha nodded and the three began making their way towards where June had ran off to.

_Meanwhile…_

"_There it is!" _said the gible, pointing towards a scrubby little dock plant which Ukko immediately pounced on. _"How many leaves should we… oh" _she said as Ukko ripped out a big branch.

"_Ok, nawh cah yoh awazhih noewsh lead ush to shoon?" _muttered Ukko through a mouthful of twig and leaves.

"_Um… did you mean… now can your amazing nose lead us to… June?" _said gible.

"_Yesh, shoon"_

"_Sure you can… I-I mean I can" _said gible, like before, she stood on the tip of her toes and took a deep sniff. _"Mhm… oh, she's really close… and her repel has just worn out… and… Oh no"_

"_Whah? Whah hahen?"_

"_She's… oh geez, we have to run now. I'll explain it later" _said gible. She pointed towards a dry grass path and the two Pokémon quickly made their way towards the source of the smell.

_Meanwhile…_

June had been running for a while, never really catching the so sought-after leaf. She jumped for the thirteenth time to catch the leaf. Her fingers managed to barely pinch the edge of the stray leaf but as she fell down to earth she lost footing and she let go of the leaf to stop her fall.

"Come back here leaf!" yelled June as she ran after the leaf. Thinking fast she clambered on top of a rock and managed to grab the leaf while it was still in midair. "Whoo! Victory is mine! Take that, wind!" June hopped down from the rock and began to rub it on her nettle sting. But as she lifted her head she saw something that made her drop her leaf… and her jaw.

"Woooah, I've reached civilization! ...did I wander off that far?" said June. Half hidden by a few evergreen trees was what seemed to be a giant yellow cylinder with odd-shaped gaps in them. June was about to walk forward when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

"June! Stop right there or I swear I'm gonna get Obsie to lock you up in his jaws until we get to Eterna" yelled Aretha, Sakura and Roxas by her side.

"Guys! Guys, look. I've found civilization!" June pointed towards the huge yellow cylinder. "It's... a giant yellow curved wall"

Aretha shook her head. "Can't be, I checked the map… and it was showing the right path, I checked and Eterna is still pretty far away"

"But it should have showed up on the map…"

"It should have… unless…" Aretha scratched her head and walked towards the cylinder. She examined it for a while and when she came back she was grinning. "Hey! Come and look at this, seriously, come" June, Sakura and Roxas looked at each other, then nodded. As they walked forward they realized two things:

The first one was that the wall was way bigger than they had seen, and the second was that the wall was _alive._

The 'wall' was in fact a gigantic hive made out of live combees. And they were all asleep, stacked neatly on top of each other. Before realizing what she was doing, June stepped forward and peeked through one of the gaps where a combee must have been sleeping. "Oh my god, guys, look here! It's the queen combee!" the other three leant forward to see. lying on a soft bed made out of piled up petals and dried grass combee's evolution snoozed, snoring quietly.

"That's a vespiquen, June" Said Aretha. "I've never seen one this close up"

"It smells lovely" said Sakura. "Honey and flowers… imagine sleeping on a bed that nice-smelling…"

"Must be amazing to be the head of the hive, all of these combees willing to give their lives for your every whim and desire" said Roxas.

"Shh, we don't want to wake any up" said Aretha in a hushed voice. "They might attack us"

"…Ggiiiiih…"

"What was that?" said June. "Oh no, did the vespiquen wake up?"

"No, but she will if you speak that loudly" hissed Aretha.

"This is important Aretha" said June, her face paling. "What if it's a wild ponyta rampaging? What if it crashes in the hive and the vespiquen and her servants chase us?"

"June…" started Aretha.

"She might have a point, actually" said Roxas. "If a wild Pokémon crashes into the hive we _will_ be in trouble. June, are you sure you heard a Pokémon?"

"Yeah! Sure as pear-flavored poffins are pear-flavoured poffins"

"Where do you think you heard the sound come from?"

"Uh…" June looked nervously around then pointed towards the same path they had come from. "That way"

"Let's send out some Pokémon, in case we have to fight" said Roxas. The rest nodded and called out their Pokémon. Aretha sent out Lazuli, Roxas a breloom, June sent out Moon and Sakura an espeon. The Pokémon and their trainers stood still (Minus Moon who decided to sneak out while June wasn't looking) for a few tense minutes until finally, two small figures popped out off a bush; the gible and Ukko carrying a big leafy branch.

"See, I knew it wasn't anything to worry about" said Aretha crossing her arms and shaking her head while her prinplup imitated her.

"Aww, Ukko. You got those for me?" said June, pulling Ukko into a hug. "Thanks, but I don't need them anymore… that evil gible didn't bite you, did she?"

"June, don't start" said Aretha.

"I was just asking…" said June pouting. "I mean, she's very much into biting, so…"

"Aaah… Ahtishoo!"

"Bless you" said Sakura.

"Hm? Were you talking to me?" Said Aretha.

"Yeah, didn't you sneeze?"

"Nope"

"Who sneezed then?"

"I didn't" said Roxas.

"Neither did I" said June.

"The Pokémon maybe…" Sakura trailed off as the Pokémon shook their heads. "No? then who…" she suddenly stood up straight like she had gotten stung by a combee. Slowly, very slowly her eyes hovered on Ukko, who was still holding the big leafy branch. Her eyes followed the longest branch up to a little leaf perched on the end. As Ukko scratched an itch on his ear the leaf jiggled and she realized that the very tip was brushing against a combee's face. The middle combee's face creased up and began gasping for air.

"… We have to run" said Sakura.

"What?" said June. Ukko turned his head around to face Sakura. As he did, the leaf raked across the combee's face. The combee frowned, took a deep breath and sneezed loudly. He then opened his eyes and, settling on Ukko, began to shake.

"Bee bee bee!" he cried. As he shook, the others around him woke up and began to copy what he was doing. Like a domino effect, soon every combee in the hive was fully awake and glaring at the stunned trainers and Pokémon, who were too shocked to move. The whole hive began hovering, so that it stretched out even further over the tree tops. A sharp, human like command from the inside made the combees nearest to the intruders flinch. Then, they moved elaborately to the sides like a curtain opening and vespiquen floated out, her wings fluttering elegantly and softly. She flew close to the intruders with what June could tell was a disgusted face, peering down at the trainers like a swellow might look at a rattata before swooping down for the kill.

"We're sorry!" said June. "We didn't want to disturb you… your highness…?" June turned towards Aretha, who shrugged. "We'll just leave you and… and not disturb you again… promise!"

"VESS!" said the vespiquen, pointing a two clawed hand towards June. She glared at them for a few minutes until she put her hands on her waist, cocked her head and although June couldn't see any mouth, she was sure she smiled.

"Shh… Shin inx!" said Ukko. Although his tone of voice wasn't particularly aggressive, vespiquen's hands flew to her mouth in shock and the combees around her began whispering excitedly. Even the Pokémon belonging to the other trainers raised an eyebrow and grinned.

"… Way to go, Ukko" said Aretha shaking her head.

"VESP!" yelled the vespiquen to silence Aretha. She clapped her hands and, like a queen ordering a death sentence, raised her arms above her head and swung them down to point at the intruders. The combees behind her began making an angry buzzing noise with their wings and their faces creased up into a murderous snarl. The whole colony raised itself up and, like a tidal wave, folded up on their intruders. Thankfully they seemed to be sensible enough to run before getting caught in an angry swarm.

"OH CRAP!" screamed June as she struggled to keep up with the rest. Already, the mad beating of the combees' wings was making a breeze, whipping up her hair and throwing it in her eyes and mouth. She was scared, even more scared than when she was in the Sandgem forests. At least the scary monster Pokémon she imagined there was only one, as opposed to hundreds and hundreds of bloodthirsty Pokémon with an even stronger one at the head.

"June!" Aretha ran backwards and grabbed June's hand, yanking her forward to catch up with the rest. As they were running, June and the rest noticed that the angry buzzing of the combees was fading away and the breeze stopped, but the trainers and Pokémon kept on running.

"They've… stopped chasing us!" said Sakura. "They must have tired out"

"Ess" said her espeon shaking her head. She walked over to June with an odd expression on her face. June's scalp prickled as she looked in the sun Pokémon's wide violet eyes.

"**Human, have you wondered where your shinx would be at this moment**_?" _said a strange feminine voice from nowhere.

June flinchedand looked around. "Whoa! What… who?"

"**Ever heard of telepathic Pokémon?"** said the voice with a slight chuckle. June immediately looked down and found the espeon smiling up at her.

"Oh! I have, I just didn't expect it" said June. "But anyway, what were you… thinking? It was about Ukko, isn't it?"

"**Yes, I'm afraid Ukko has gotten himself into some trouble, he challenged the vespiquen leader"**

"No! Oh crap, where is he now? Tell me!" said June.

"**Follow" **said the espeon. She leaped forward, flicked her forked tail to beckon June, and dove in a bush. Not quite understanding why they should go inside the prickly bushes, June shrugged and dove right after her.

"Oow" June groaned as a thorny branch raked across her face. "Telepathic Pokémon, are you sure they're here?"

"**I'm an espeon, but call me Ruby. And no, they are not fighting here" **said Ruby. **"They are a little further up ahead, and you must keep in the bushes for your own safety" **

"Okay, I think I can trust you" said June, crawling army-like on the damp floor to avoid the top spikes from getting caught on her clip. "But how do we know vespiquen won't go in the bushes after me?"

"**Simple, the vespiquen leaders are always taking care of their wings with ridiculous worry, diving in the bushes would tear them into ribbons" **said Ruby. **"Ok, we're here. Look to your right" **June obeyed and turned her head.

What she saw shocked her so much her heart skipped a beat. The vespiquen and Ukko were glaring at each other fiercely while the combee minions were spinning around them creating some sort of dome, flying so fast that they were a mere yellow blur around the battlers. The vespiquen eyed Ukko's every movement while Ukko just wanted to glare at the vespiquen as hard as he could.

June turned to Ruby, who was watching the duel expression less "Ruby… how are we going to he-"

"**Just watch, interfering now would be fatal mistake" **said Ruby, the gem on her head twinkling. June watched as the battlers glared at each other. The vespiquen raised her arm, and in that instant Ukko growled and leapt forward, his mouth open and showing sharp fangs ready to rip the vespiquen to shreds. The vespiquen saw this and flew to the right to dodge but Ukko swerved his head to the right and closed his jaws on one of the vespiquen's wings with a horrible crunch. The vespiquen screamed in pain and flailed around to dislodge Ukko, but he just hung there swinging back and forth. The vespiquen finally gave a shrill command and all of the combee minions surrounding them suddenly tossed themselves upon Ukko.

"Ukko!" screamed June, standing up. "Ruby! Help him! Oh god, he's going to be eaten by some combees!" barely noticing the thorns that dug onto her leg and cutting them, she ran forward towards the big combee mound but an odd force made her freeze where she was.

"**Stay still, human. Or this might be your last day** **on earth" ** said Ruby. She leaped forward and fired an odd black orb at the big mound of combees from her mouth. The black orb smashed into the mound, knocking out a few combees that fell on the floor unconscious. The whole mound then shuddered; tiny popping lightning bolts ran across the surface and white light shone out from the middle.

"Ruby! It's not working! We need to scare them off" said June her body still frozen by the energy. "What are combees scared of?"

"**Mainly fire or strong flying types" **said Ruby tilting her head to glare at the mound. **"But I don't have any moves of either type"**

"But then… who?" said June. "Can you release me please? I think I can make some fire with these branches"

Ruby's gem twinkled and the strange force released June's body, but Ruby shook her head **"Impossible, the branches are too damp, the whole weather is too damp" **said Ruby. **"There's going to be rain later"**

"But… what's gonna happen to… I HAVE AN IDEA!" screamed June, making Ruby flinch. "Ruby, could you call a little gible through telekinesis? She can use a fire-type attack"

"**I can do something better" **said Ruby with a small smile. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and made the scarlet gem on her forehead twinkle. The tip of her forked tail twitched with concentration as she made the jewel on her head shine as brightly as she could.

Something twinkled in the distance, catching June's eye. June turned her head to see what it was but she didn't see anything apart from trees and a few flowers… and what looked like a very shiny blue kite in the distance.

June frowned. She could swear that the kite was getting bigger, and that the edges were glowing purple… maybe someone overdid the purple glitter on the edges? It looked like it was coming closer…some careless kid must have let go of the string, but as June reflected on this, there didn't seem to be any wind…

"Ruby… where is the gible? Are you sure she's coming?" said June. Ruby didn't reply, instead twitching her forked tail towards the kite. Wow! There had really been a lot of work on this kite! June could see fake eyes and white triangles and a big red splodge in the middle. It even looked as if it were a real… gible? June realized that the Pokémon-shaped kite was actually a Pokémon-shaped Pokémon. A gible! And not just any gible, _the _gible. "Giiiiiible! Giiiible!" said June, waving her arms. "Fly over here! Faster! Fly over here!... Okay, you can stop now… Stop! Your going t-Oof"

The gible crashed on June's stomach, knocking the air out of her. She feebly nudged the gible off her as she just sat there gasping like a magikarp. Ruby opened her eyes and waved her tail at June apologetically, while the gible just curled up into a little scaly blue ball and just shivered in shock where she lay.

"Giih… ble! Fire… the… combees!" wheezed June. The gible just tilted her head at June. She tried again "Gib-ble! Fire on the combees! Please" the gible scratched the top of her head and looked over to Ruby, who shrugged. "Ruby, could you tell this gible to use fire on the combees please?"

Ruby nodded and turned to the gible. "Ess, espeon" she said in what June guessed was a reassuring tone. The gible looked genuinely confused and uttered out a small "Giible". Ruby turned to June. **"You seem to be mistaken, this gible here has no memory of ever having a fire-type move"**

"Don't lie!" yelled June. "I know you have one! You used it last night! That purply-yellow fire bolt!" June looked down at her shoes, then looked up, her eyes filling up with tears. "I know I've… me and Ukko have been treating you badly, and I'm sorry, and I bet Ukko's sorry too. It's just that I was scared of you biting me and Ukko's really wild and protective and… and please just help him, please… he might die under there" June sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve.

"Giih…ble?" said the gible, tilting her head as she looked at June with concern. She tapped her chin with the tip of her claws as she digested the information June had provided… then it suddenly hit her. June must have been talking about dragon rage! She gave June one of her most reassuring smiles she could muster and took a deep breath, puffing herself to almost twice her size. When June was sure that the gible would pop like a balloon, she opened her mouth and spat out a huge dragon rage attack, one of the biggest ones the gible could make. The dragon rage sped furiously towards the mound and crashed right into the middle, purple bolts spreading and crackling over the yellow bodies. The combees screamed in shock as another dragon rage attack headed their way, they quickly picked themselves off their hill and flew off while squealing angrily, but a few combees were still piled up.

June dashed over to the hill and found that the remaining combees were all paralyzed, hardly able to twitch their wings in response. She shoved a few apart and found a lock of black hair. "Ruby! I found him! Could you lift him up with your psi power?"

"**Sure" **the gem on Ruby's head glowed purple as a figure rose from the motionless combees, revealing an unconscious luxio, his face frozen in a snarl.

"...Ukko evolved! Amazi- whats that on his leg?" something black and red was gripping his left leg. Ruby lifted him up more to show a yellow torso attached to it. "Vespiquen still has him! I can't believe she doesn't give up even when she's paralyzed" June ran over to them and prised the clawed arm off his leg. "Ruby, please drop him onto my back, I think I can bear his... new weight" June said, although she sounded doubtful. Slowly, Ukko's body hovered above June as if an invisible was pulling him, then the rope broke.

June's body crashed to the ground as the sheer weight of Ukko pinned her to the ground. "Ugh... help... no, I can do this!" June shifted herself so that Ukko's head lolled on top of her head and both of his paws hung loosely on her shoulders. Gazing determinately at the motionless vespiquen arm, she slowly got up, but before she was even halfway to standing up her knees buckled and she fell forward. "Okay Ruby, could you lift him up with your psi powers so he's lighter?" almost immediately, the invisible rope pulled upward and June was able to stand up and carry him as easily as if she were carrying a big balloon. "Whew! Thanks! Come on, let's go" June walked onwards though the path alongside the one that they had come from, motioning for the Pokémon to follow her. Ruby soon caught up with June, carrying the gible on her back.

"**I'm a little disappointed actually" **said the espeon flicking her tail in annoyance. **"I was looking forward to battling the vespiquen leader"**

"You'd have to deal with the whole hive then" pointed out June. "They value their leader too much to let you come close to her"

"**Mmm... I think you're right... we'd better run, I can see the combee's paralysis fading away"**

"Wha...? right now?"

"**No, but we'd better pick up our pace" **said the espeon, running ahead of June.

"Okay!" said June cheerfully, she stroked the big paw by her cheek and ran along with her.

_Later..._

"Hi guys!" said June, waving at them.

"June, what happened there? seriously" said Aretha, giving June a hard look. "Why'd you run off towards the hive... and what happened to you? You look like you've been dragged through a barbed wire"

"Actually, it was a thorny bush" said June, she looked down at her clothes. There were small rips and cuts on her skirt and shirt, and her hair looked as if it were electrified. "I had to save Ukko, and look, he evolved!"

"I can see that..." said Aretha with a sniff. "I was so worried, especially when gible started hovering and flew out of here randomly"

"Oh that... we needed back up... sorta. But there's no time for that, we need to run, which way shall we go?"

Aretha took out the Sinnoh Dex "Hm... seems that all that crazy running we did earlier got us really close to Eterna! We just need to cross over this giant ice tornado, then we'll be there..."

"I hate it when it does that"

"Yeah, me too..." said Aretha. "But apart from that, everything else seems to be normal"

"Guys... we'd better get our Pokémon ready for battle" said Sakura in a small voice, her espeon curling herself around Sakura's ankles. "Ruby just told me that the vespiquen and her cronies are coming over, fast"

"All of the combees?" asked Aretha with a worried look on her face.

"No, just six" replied Sakura.

"Good, we can beat them" said Roxas. "I think we can beat them with our Pokémon alone, but just in case..." Roxas withdrew a Poké ball and released a flareon June recognised as Rimochi from the Diamond cutters contest. June laid down Ukko and released Dancer, who chirruped happily at being out of her Poké ball.

All of the trainers and Pokémon gazed expectedly at the path June had come from, where a steady buzzing sound was coming from, getting louder by the minute. After a few minutes of waiting the vespiquen came out, her hurt wing shuddering pathetically while her other one was reduced to a faint silver flur from the effort of keeping her airborne, behind her, five combees were buzzing around angrily while the sixth one flitted around vespiquen's wing trying to heal it. The vespiquen's red eyes flitted angrily towards, Ukko, who was still knocked out on the grass, then to Sakura, then June. The vespiquen raised an arm as though getting ready to throw something and...

"Rimochi! Flamethrower, Kashirin, jump and use focus punch!" before vespiquen could finish her attack, Rimochi released a towering stream of fire while at three combees while Kashirin leaped into the air with one of her fists cloaked in whitish light, smashing it in the middle of the vespiquen's horned head. The vespiquen hovered around drunkenly and tried to raise her arm again, but June saw it coming.

"Absorb then top it off with stun spore!" yelled June. As Dancer positioned herself to absorb the vespiquen's health, the vespiquen screeched and threw a small ball of yellow glittering light at Dancer, hitting her squarely in the chest, meanwhile, Aretha commanded Lazuli to peck an unsuspecting combee while Ruby threw shadow balls around happily. The vespiquen hissed and flew over to Ruby, raising her clawed arms above her head and swinging them down on Ruby's body, her claws digging into her violet fur.

"Ruby, signal beam!" screeched Sakura. Ruby growled at the vespiquen and fired a rainbow coloured beam from her jewel into the vespiquen's face. While the vespiquen shielded her eyes Ruby fired a second signal beam at one of her cronies, who dropped to the floor unconscious.

"Metal claw on the vespiquen!" yelled Aretha. Lazuli ran up to the vespiquen, who was still rubbing her eyes, and struck her across the face with a glowing fin. The vespiquen shuddered and raised her arm to strike Lazuli, but her hand closed, her eyes shut and she dropped on the floor. The three remaining combees quickly began hovering around their fallen leader frantically, but a quick flamethrower from Rimochi soon sent them flying off.

"Hmm, so much for loyalty" said Roxas recalling his Pokémon.

"Well, it was either that or getting barbecued" pointed out June. "I'm just glad that that mean vespiquen is down" June looked over to Ukko, who was just recovering from fainting. June knelt down and stroked him. "Ukko! Look, you evolved!"

"Lu…Luuu?" mumbled Ukko as he looked in wonder at himself, his gaze drifted ffrom himself, to June and to the unconscious vespiquen lying on the floor. Immediately Ukko sprang to his feet and growled at her, his ears fizzing with electricity.

"No! Ukko, no. leave her, she's already unconscious" said June. "But she did put up a fight, when we pulled you out of that combee hill, she was still hanging onto you!" Ukko frowned but shook his head and nudged June with his paws, convinced that June was lying.

"Yeah… so, anyone want to go to Eterna?" said Aretha, showing them the map. "It's just along this dusty road, then we go south and the entrance should be there"

"Awesome!" yelled Roxas.

"Uh…Aretha?" said June. "I got a nettle sting on my ank-"

"Shut up, June" said Aretha pinching the bridge of her nose. "Please, just… shut up"

A/N: Reviews greatly appreciated.


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